


Keeping Canis Major

by darkblu



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Adorable!Hannibal, Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Blood, Boarding School, Bullying, Canon-Typical Violence, Dissociation, Empathy, Hannibal's paradoxical moral code, Hannibal's red sweater, Happy Ending, Kid Will, M/M, Minor Character Death, Murder Husbands, No underage, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Running Away, Slice of Life, Slow Build, Teen!Hannibal, Temporary Muteness, actually this thing is loaded with angst, and a lot of fluff, baby!Will, but still a terrible human being, consent will be so explicit you will need a dentist, dark!Will, eventually, kid!Hannibal, like ultra slow, more or less, no betrayal, none of those tags necessarily in that order lol, unhealthy attachment, unintentional manipulation but no mind games
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2018-05-05 18:53:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 34,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5386691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkblu/pseuds/darkblu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Will had been born in Lithuania instead of Louisiana?</p><p>When one-year old Will Graham is left at an orphanage in rural Lithuania, young Hannibal Lecter finds an angel deposited in his own personal Hell.  He's going to keep him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bite

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first multi-chapter fic ever alksmkdlg. Totally unbeta'd. If you want to watch our Murder Husbands grow up together and don't mind schlepping through an indulgent character-study of Hannibal, you're in the right place.
> 
> I apologize in advance for any horrific translations. Mouse over for English.

Ten year-old Hannibal Lecter is too thin, all sharp angles and glassy eyes. The wind tosses his hair and pulls at his sweater, once elegant, now tattered and stained. His eyelids droop just slightly, and with an exhale visible in the cold air, the snow around him is replaced with rolling hills of green, a castle in the distance, and the sound of peeling laughter.

The boy stands absolutely still, breathing in the memory. Mischa is beside him, pulling at his hand, blue hepatica flowers tucked into her hair. He smiles at her, a crooked, broken thing, and doesn’t see the punch coming.

It connects with the side of his head, dissipating the memory with a jolt of iron pain. At once everything is white again, snow blinding in his daze from the strike, and Hannibal stumbles, as much from the shock of it as the force of the blow. A swift shove easily knocks him from his feet.

The snow isn’t deep enough to cushion the fall. Hannibal's palms shred on the gravel beneath as he catches himself, but he can’t keep his chin from connecting with the ground. His teeth clack together. The boy pulls his face up slowly, snow clinging to his chin, quickly melted by blood. He's silent.

“Surprise, _keistuolis_ ,” his attacker jeers above him, and Hannibal knows the voice.

Saulius is fourteen years old and laughing, bouncing his foot up and down on Hannibal’s back. Hannibal cranes his neck to look, and is unsurprised to see Tomas and Ausrine standing a few steps back. They're smirking down at him with hands in their pockets. Rarely participants, but always amused. Hannibal catalogs their facial expressions.

“What were you staring at this time, huh?" Saulius asks, "What the hell do you see when you stare off like that?”

Hannibal says nothing, his large, blank eyes blinking back at the three of them. Sometimes he's angry at these attacks, but just as often, he feels nothing. He makes no attempt to get up.

The heel of the older boy’s boot stops bouncing and starts digging into Hannibal’s thin sweater.

"What's wrong with you anyway?” Saulius asks with rising anger, working himself up over the non-reaction. “Damn alien!”

Hannibal blinks again and the sense of nothingness shatters. The boy is swallowed by a wave of rage, so strong it chokes him, and he twists like a cat, hands seizing Saulius’ leg, clawing the fabric up to expose his flesh before the older boy can react more than to shout. Hannibal sinks his teeth into the pale, exposed skin and locks his jaw.

Saulius screams.  Warm blood flows past Hannibal’s teeth, copper tang staining his mouth inside and out.  His eyes fall closed. Saulius attempts frantically to shake the boy off of him, striking at his head and shoulders with panicked fists, as Tomas and Ausrine pull futilely at Hannibal.  The boy refuses to let go, his rage gradually subsiding with each gush of warmth. He sinks his teeth deeper.

Hannibal hears Gabija shout from the kitchen window, and he cracks his eyes open. She’s slamming through the door, rushing towards the pack of them, worn apron billowing, cheeks instantly pink in alarm.

“ _Qu'est-ce au nom de Dieu qui se passe? Arrêtez, arrêtez, vous tous_! ”

Hannibal yanks his head back, tearing a chunk of flesh from Saulius’s leg, swallowing without thought, and rips himself away from Ausrine and Tomas’s still grasping hands. He shuffles back quickly on his hands and behind, stopping only once he has several meters between him and the now howling Saulius.

Gabija drops to her knees in the shallow snow beside the sobbing teenager, quickly assessing the damage. Her wide eyes jump from the wound, to the snow flicked with red, and finally to Hannibal.

His hair is wild from the tussle, eyes bright and sullen. A bruise is already forming over his temple, reaching toward his eye. Blood is smeared across his lips and chin. His tongue reaches out to taste it again.

“ _Dieu ait pitié_ ,” the matron breathes. Her eyes shine with an emotion Hannibal cannot identify, but that he knows he doesn’t like. He bares his teeth, still pink, and she shakes her head, looking away quickly to remove her apron and wrap it tightly around Saulius’s bleeding leg.

“Get him in the house,” she tells Tomas and Ausrine in her broken Lithuanian. “You will tell me what has happened.”

The boys obey, casting looks back at Hannibal, equal parts hatred and fear. Hannibal pushes himself to his feet as Gabija does the same. The boy takes small steps back, cut hands held behind him, head titled slightly down and to the left. He wants to retreat but fights the impulse.

“ _Que vais-je à faire avec vous_? ” Gabija asks quietly.

She only speaks French when she’s upset or when she doesn’t want the children to understand.

She doesn’t know that Hannibal understands. He knows she often wonders whether he can even understand Lithuanian.

“Will you tell me what happened here?” she asks. Her hand goes up to catch a greying lock of hair, caught in the breeze and crossing her face. “If you tell me, maybe I can help. Then these fights won’t happen.”

Hannibal says nothing. His eyes are darkening, dulling again, with each passing second. He raises an arm to wipe blood roughly from his chin.

Gabija waits a few more moments, staring at Hannibal with that same unwelcome emotion, now mixed with frustration - Hannibal identifies it with a spike of victory - before sighing.

“I wish you would talk with me,” she says. “It's been four months, Hannibal. Four months, and only your name, you’ve told me. _Cela ne veut pas facile. Je ne sais pas quel est le problème avec vous, enfant_. ”

Hannibal’s gaze narrows minutely. Some of the anger is returning, but twisted up, confused and unpleasant. His hands pull at the front of his sweater, flexing in the fabric before letting go.  His eyes drop to the pattern of red decorating the snow and exposed gravel.

“It’s bad to hurt people like that, Hannibal,” Gabija says to him, quiet but sure, like it’s wrong to need to say it.

His tangled anger crystallizes and hardens into certainty. His lips quirk up at the corners.

Gabija is wrong.  Hannibal knows what he feels, and it had not felt bad to have blood wash against his teeth.

He breaks into a run, past Gabija, who makes an aborted grab for him. Then he’s through the open door and up the stairs of the orphanage, alone, lips still stained crimson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the intro! Will is coming. ;)
> 
> Just some notes going forward. This fic will cover about twenty years of growing up. I wanted to explore the characters, build them from the beginning, and have an excuse to play with their gravity towards each other without all the agony associated with canon. I'm aiming to keep the characters as true to themselves as possible, while obviously accounting for age and changed circumstances.
> 
> I may add tags or characters as I go since this is only loosely planned. Chapter length will probably vary greatly. I write terrifically slow, so please be patient for updates, but don't hesitate to encourage me along. ;u;


	2. Find

There are eight children living at the orphanage, four miles outside of Palanga.  Three are younger than Hannibal, at ages seven, five, and four. 

Hannibal doesn’t like them.

Elena is old enough to avoid him like the older children.  Titus clings to Gabija like her apron, and when he sees Hannibal, stares at him with wide eyes.  Lika cries when he looks at her, the great, bawling wails of an infant half her age.  
  
Worse than that, these children are mundane.  Not like his Mischa had been.  And so, despite their innocence, he resents them for the simple fact that they are alive and she is not.  
  
He swallows the feeling, acrid on the back of his tongue, and looks away from his work.  Hannibal is lying beneath the kitchen, elbows in the dirt of the crawlspace.  He’s sketching with charcoal on pilfered butcher paper, flashlight carefully angled to illuminate the low space.  His materials are inadequate, but part of Hannibal burns with satisfaction over turning trash into something beautiful.  
  
The door above him slams shut, Gabija’s heavy steps quickly moving into the kitchen. Hannibal looks up, tracking her movements by sound.  She’s walking back and forth in the room, either pacing or too distracted to fetch necessary items in an efficient order.  He hears her muted voice, obviously French, the words indiscernible.  
  
Her movements stop near the kitchen table and then Hannibal hears it.  Soft crying. Hannibal doesn’t recognize the source. 

His heartbeat ticks up.  He listens for a moment more before quickly rolling up the paper, tucking it, charcoal, and flashlight carefully between the beams above him.  The items nestle snuggly against a half dozen other rolls of paper.  He spares his collection a small smile before crawling from the dark and into the bright afternoon.  
  
Hannibal brushes the dirt from his knees and elbows, stumbling slightly in his attempt to do so without stopping.  He jogs around the orphanage, slowing before he rounds the corner to confirm that the yard is empty.  
  
Darting for the door, he finds his feet stopping just before it, hands pinned to his side.  The sick feeling of excitement likely to be disappointed sours his stomach.  He swallows against his heart and grabs for the handle, pushing the door open.  
  
He takes in the scene quickly.  A pot of broth has been recently placed on the stove, flame marginally too high.  Gabija is kneeling in front of one of the kitchen chairs, cooking spoon in hand, speaking in soft French to a baby boy, no older than two.    
  
A mess of dark, wavy hair dominates the child’s face.  His small hand grips a tine in the chair tightly, bare feet surging clumsily against the seat.  His large blue eyes, red rimmed and wet with tears, are locked on Gabija’s.  The soft sobs he gives are strangely muted, almost involuntary.  
  
“ _Qu'est ce que je vais faire_? ” Gabija is saying to the child. “ _Chut, chut… Dieu, comment vais-je réussir à prendre soin de vous aussi? Je suis déjà dépassé. Chut, ça va, mon enfant_.”  
  
She reaches for the boy, but he pulls back, face scrunching, seemingly unable to pull his eyes away from hers.  Gabija lets her hand drop with a shuddering breath.  
  
Intrigued, feeling like fragile glass, Hannibal moves silently into the kitchen.  He stops a few steps behind Gabija.  The movement captures the baby’s attention, and his eyes shock from Gabija’s to Hannibal’s.  
  
Hannibal pulls in a sharp breath.  The child’s sobs quiet instantly.  His feet still on the chair, little hand flexing once.  The excitement in Hannibal’s stomach builds and breaks into consuming relief.  He has not been disappointed.  Pinpricks sting sharp at the corners of his eyes.  
  
Gabija goes silent in her mantra of despair, confused by the boy’s sudden calm.  
  
“I will look after him,” Hannibal says.  His voice grates against the syllables, painful from disuse.    
  
“ _Mon Dieu_!” Gabija yelps, wooden spoon jerking, spraying broth up the wall.  She nearly falls backward, hand whipping out to catch herself as her head whips around to find Hannibal.  
  
“Hannibal?” she whispers.  She falls to her behind, wooden spoon clattering to the floor.  Her expression is caught somewhere between astonishment and confusion.  Hannibal memorizes it.  
  
“I will look after him,” he repeats, this time in French.  He will give his secrets, all of them, for this one gift.  “Please let me look after him, Gabija.”  
  
Her mouth opens and closes several times.  She blinks at Hannibal, then looks back at the baby boy seated quietly in the kitchen chair.  He’s still staring at Hannibal, one hand now tangling in his curls.  
  
A slow smile drags up Hannibal’s face, eyes crinkling at the corners.  It tugs at his cheeks, no longer feels familiar, but the wild burning in his chest is as welcome as the spring.  
  
Ignoring Gabija, Hannibal closes the distance to the baby boy.  Hannibal reaches out a hand. The small hand wrapped around the chair immediately releases it to meet Hannibal’s.  Fingers, not as pudgy as they should be, wrap tightly around Hannibal’s thumb.  Hannibal looks up from their hands to see the baby returning his smile, a watery giggle escaping in its wake.  
  
It’s all the invitation Hannibal needs.  He leans forward to pull the child into his arms, bracing him against his hip, right hand coming up to rest in those wild curls.  He smells faintly of sea spray, the wind, of fear recently extinguished.  
  
“What’s his name?”  Hannibal asks Gabija, finally returning his attention to her.  
  
Gabija doesn’t answer.  Her eyebrows have disappeared into her bangs, looking at Hannibal as if she’s never seen him before.  “I do not understand you, child,” she breathes, not referring to his question.  
  
“I know,” Hannibal says.  He adjusts the boy on his hip, smiling at him again as a small hand falls on Hannibal’s face, patting gently at the fading bruise.  
  
Gabija shakes her head, finally pulling herself to her feet.  She picks up the spoon.  “His name is Will.  Graham,” she adds, awkward around her accent.  “His father is a sailor, it seems.  He handed him over and left.”  
  
Hannibal’s grip on Will tightens minutely at the idea of anyone abandoning him.  He lowers his head to look the baby in the face, those charming curls brushing Hannibal’s forehead.  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Will,” he tells him, formal, still in French, “I am Hannibal Lecter.”  
  
Will blinks at him, rapt but silent.  Hannibal harbors no doubt that the child can speak.  He’s simply too occupied with other thoughts to bother, Hannibal decides, certain, and with a note of pride.  
  
He looks up to see Gabija studying him, uncertain.  For the first time, Hannibal regrets his lack of effort with her, regrets hurting the other boys where she could see.  He chastises himself, determined to never make that mistake again.  
  
He isn’t sure which expression is best suited to swaying her, isn't sure he could mirror it anyway, so he settles for what she’s used to seeing from him.  Nothing.  He uses words instead.  
  
“I know how to care for him,” he says.  He clenches his jaw, then releases it.  “I had a little sister.”  
  
Gabija’s eyes soften at the admission, perceiving the loss in the use of past tense, and Hannibal knows he's won.  As if such a loss could explain him.  
  
“Alright, Hannibal,” she finally says.  “You can take charge of him.  God knows I need the help.” She pauses.  “But if anything happens to that child, I—” she cuts off at the look on Hannibal’s face.  
  
It is steel, cold and threatening, livid at the implication.  He sees fear flicker in the shadows of her eyes and schools his expression back into neutrality.    
  
“I promise you, he will be safe with me,” Hannibal vows, more to himself than Gabija.    
  
He turns away with Will, not waiting for her answer, and carries his friend to his room, _their_ room, in the attic.


	3. Squeeze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> unbeta'd
> 
> please keep in mind this is a Hannibal who hasn't yet learned not to expect attachment, or to be wary of it. He's lonely, he likes Will, and for any ten year old, I think it's that simple. Particularly one who's been through traumatic loss, and who feels deeply, differently, and doesn't know how to process those feelings.
> 
> now I've depressed myself orz Enjoy!!

Hannibal stalls at dinner time.  The constant ache of hunger, usually grown sharp by six o’clock, has been dulled by what he recognizes, with irritation, as nerves.  He runs his hand through Will’s curls again, as he has countless times in the last four hours, and absently runs his tongue over the edges of his own teeth.  
  
He had given Will a bath first.  Borrowing a bucket and a cup from the kitchen, he had wanted to wash the residue of fear from his skin.  He stole a pinch of salt for the water, telling himself he had done so because it would clean safer than the acrid, lye soap.  Not because he wanted to preserve Will’s ocean tang.     
  
After that, he had dressed Will and held him close, whispering to him in French about cascading forests of emerald and great clouds of fireflies until the little boy’s eyes had begun to droop.  Hannibal had curled around him protectively on their thin mattress, eyes narrowed sharply on the attic door.  
  
Awake now, Will plays with a crane Hannibal had folded from a scrap of newspaper.  A trick his mother had taught him, one he had never thought to ask about, he recalls clinically.  The baby gently crushes the bird between his palms, then pulls the wings out again with all his fingers, quietly delighted when it returns to shape again and again.  He brings the bird to his mouth, and Hannibal absently redirects, gently taking it in hand to make the wings flap for Will.  
  
He’s nervous, Hannibal admits to himself.  
  
He knows he’s avoiding a stronger word, unwilling to assign it to how he feels in this situation, unwilling to assign it to himself ever again.  But he cannot deny… the idea of bringing Will before the rest of the household unsettles him.  If he chases the feeling, alternately molten and jagged, he’d prefer not to let anyone at all, in all of the rest of world, put their eyes on his new Will.  Because with their eyes, comes their words, then their fists…  
  
He shuts down the train of thought, swallows.  Will pats the bird, it’s paper neck creasing and sitting at an angle, then turns his head to look at Hannibal.  His blue eyes are bright, inquisitive.  Hannibal’s tangled emotions calm instantly.  
  
Abruptly, Will’s stomach rumbles.  His tiny mouth curls in on itself, but he doesn’t otherwise indicate his discomfort.  Hannibal feels a flash of something like cold and dark sliding down the back of his neck.  He doesn’t like it, knows it’s because he shouldn’t have let his nerves interfere with providing for Will, and instantly he’s on his feet, Will and the crane in hand.  Will meeting the others is inevitable.  And he will not leave him unattended for even a moment.  
  
Will gives a soft noise, the closest he’s come to speech all day, and Hannibal hums in encouragement, bouncing him a little as he takes the stairs.  
  
His confident steps falter as he nears the bright entrance to the kitchen.  He pauses in the shadows of the unlit hallway, drawing a breath and clutching Will to his collarbone.    
  
Hannibal yanks at something behind his eyes, calling up what he had once bothered to cultivate as a mask.  A work in progress, imperfect and now cracked from disuse.  He attempts to fit it to his features.  He strangles down his unease, his urgent need to protect what's _his_ , until it’s tied, packaged, and neatly tucked away in the back of his skull.  
  
He steps into the kitchen, keeps walking, scans the room with a show of disinterest.  Gabjija has paused with her spoon inches from her mouth.  Hannibal’s eyes move on as the spoon descends slowly with her hand.  Saulius is looking at him, eyes hard but confused.  
  
“Dinner started ten minutes ago, Hannibal,” Gabija chastises, gently.  
  
He ignores her for the moment, going to the fridge for milk.  He gives it a careful sniff before setting it aside.  Reaching into the pantry in vain, Hannibal sets Will on the countertop so he can reach with both arms, on his toes.  He gets his fingers on a bottle set towards the back and inches it forward, finally pulling it down.    
  
The kitchen is utterly silent.  
  
Hannibal fills the infant bottle halfway, stows the milk, and returns Will to his arms.  Will reaches for the bottle with eager hands, but Hannibal keeps it out of reach.  He finally turns to address Gabija.  
  
“My apologies.”  
  
Spoons clatter where they’re dropped against dishes, table, and floor.  Hannibal suppresses a smirk.  His heart is still hammering in his chest, but a sense of control is beginning to kindle.  He takes his place at the table.    
  
Putting the bottle on the floor, he pretends to ignore the children around him.  Hannibal smooths a hand across the back of Will’s head.  The boy has begun to tense at the attention, eyes going wide and jumping from face to face.  The crane is crumpled tight in his tiny fist.  
  
Hannibal re-situates him on his lap, turning him to face Hannibal, catching and holding his eyes.  Will eases.  Hannibal proceeds to extract bits of vegetable from the broth set in front of him, pushing the soggy squares into Will’s hand and directing it to his mouth.  
  
The boy smushes it more onto his lips than into his mouth, but he’s happy, so Hannibal supposes it will do for a preliminary attempt.  He has no idea what Will had been fed by his father, if it all.  
  
It was easy, for a moment, to forget about the audience with his eyes on Will.  But after a few more passes of vegetables from hand to hand, Saulius erupts.  
  
“What the hell!?”  
  
The spell is broken, and a half-dozen chairs scrape as spoons are collected from the floor, awkward shuffling as the other children rush to return to their meals, eyes glancing furtively at Hannibal and the new boy.  
  
Before Hannibal can answer, Gabija interjects.  
  
“Everyone… this baby is Will Graham.  He is staying with us now."  She takes a breath, eyeing Hannibal.  “I didn’t mention because, well.  Hannibal is agreed to look after Will for me, for us.”  
  
Tomas chokes on his broth.  The older children don’t seem to know what to say, and the younger ones are too caught by Hannibal’s uncharacteristic behavior to think to say anything.  Most sip dumbly at their dinner.  
  
“You will all be kind to Will, yes?” Gabija continues, a measure of steel entering her tone.  Her eyes drift to the older boys.  
  
Each one nods demurely, but Saulius is just a fraction too slow.  His eyes are on Hannibal. 

Hannibal feels unease fighting against its bonds, and brutally crushes it.  He allows the points of his canines to show behind his lips and passes another pulpy carrot piece to Will.  
  
“Finish your dinner, you all, now,” Gabija says to the room, returning to her own bowl.  
  
Saulius’s eyes drop.  Hannibal exhales softly, satisfied he’ll go undisturbed for the remainder of the meal.    
  
The boy takes his time.  Chatter eventually returns to the kitchen, then ebbs as children trickle from the room, dishes to the sink.  Gabija loiters at the table.  Even she eventually turns to the washing.    
  
Hannibal shares his vegetables until Will starts to instead press the pieces to Hannibal’s mouth.  The older boy wipes his chin with his napkin, does the same to Will, and retrieves the bottle from the floor.  He passes it to a delighted Will.  
  
As Will settles against his chest, Hannibal feels nervousness again licking at the edges of his ribs.  There is a sudden stillness to the house that tastes of danger.  
  
He eyes his still half-full bowl.  Loathe to do so, but unable to deny the efficiency, Hannibal sets down his spoon and tips the bowl to his open mouth to drain the remainder.  It's long grown cold.  Hannibal swallows anyway.  
  
He adjusts his grip on Will and slides out of the chair, bowl in hand.  He passes it to Gabija at the sink.  
  
“Thank you for dinner, Gabija.”  
  
Again faintly startled by his voice, she looks at him, hands still submerged in soapy water.  Her gaze falls to Will.  He’s taking eager pulls from the bottle, eyes at half-mast, dark curls crushed against the red of Hannibal’s sweater.  Hannibal’s hand tightens briefly at Will’s back.  
  
Abruptly Gabija nods and waves away the thanks, hand tossing suds towards the window.  She returns to the washing up.  
  
Hannibal leaves quickly.  
  
He thinks to scent the hall too late.  He’s barely stepped into the dark when a sharp shove at his shoulder sends him stumbling.  Mask slipping, Hannibal turns quickly, snarling.  
  
It’s enough to startle Saulius into pausing, just enough time for Hannibal to quickly set Will down by the staircase and step forward.  
  
Recovering, Saulius echoes the movement until he’s inches from Hannibal.  He looks down at the younger boy, sneer in place.  
  
Jabbing a finger into Hannibal’s chest, he says, quiet, angry, “You still owe me for my leg, you fairy.”  
  
Hannibal says nothing, only leans forward, ignoring the accompanying pain to apply pressure to the finger at his chest.  To force it to buckle.  Saulius withdraws it, instead taking a hard fistful of Hannibal's sweater.  
  
“Still got nothing to say?  I thought you could talk now.”  
  
“I don’t speak with animals.”  
  
Saulius goes red in the face.  He’s completely still for a moment.  The next, Hannibal’s head snaps back, pain blossoming across his cheek bone.  He doesn’t react, only lifts his head level again to stare at Saulius.  
  
Will starts to cry.  Quiet, like its not allowed, but that he can’t help himself.  Something must flicker in Hannibal’s eyes, something not smothered fast enough, because Saulius’s expression of frustration smooths into something darker.  His gaze goes to Will.  
  
“Looks like even the alien has a weakness.”  
  
The world shorts out in a blink.  Hannibal is next aware of corded flesh yielding beneath his fingers, thumbs pressing hard into a windpipe.  
  
Saulius’s eyes are wide, panicked hands scratching and pushing at Hannibal, but the smaller boy merely pulls him closer.  
  
“Do not mistake Will as a weakness,” he whispers into his face.  
  
The hallway light flicks on.  Hannibal releases the teenager, who stumbles back, gasping and clutching at his throat.  
  
Hannibal's eyes drift to Gabija.  Tense and silent, she stands in the doorway, fingertips dripping water to the tiles.  She looks between the three of them, at Saulius still struggling with air, the red ring around Hannibal’s eye.  Will tucked carefully, tearfully, against the base of the stairs.  
  
Hannibal recognizes the threat of tears sparkling in her own eyes.    
  
He flexes his hands, still warm from squeezing tissue and artery.  His heart is hammering, no longer from nerves, from fear, but instead from that something dark and heavy and _good_.  He looks away.  
  
“Saulius.”  Gabija's voice breaks.  She tries again.  “Saulius, it’s, it’s your turn to help me with the wash.”  
  
She is beyond her depth, Hannibal knows.  Something curls at the bottom of his ribcage at the thought.  He turns from it, wrapping Will up and against his chest again, retrieving the forgotten bottle.  He takes the stairs two at a time.  
  
If Gabija says anything further, Hannibal doesn’t hear it.  He whispers nothings into Will’s hair and listens only to the beat of his own heart.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading ;u; More to come asap!


	4. Sting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot begin to tell you all how much your wonderful comments and kudos mean to me. Thank you. Just the fact that you choose to spend your time with my fic is just, incredible. ;u; Lots of fluff for you lovelies in this one!
> 
> unbeta'd!

Through the narrow window, Hannibal watches the sunrise, obscured into fog by each exhale against the glass.  He memorizes the colors melting from the hills, frames them where only he can reach.  Fingertips tracing a snowflake into the mist on the glass, he takes his gaze from the attic view and onto Will, still asleep on the mattress.  
  
Three weeks have passed with little incident.  Hannibal finds himself unsure whether Saulius’s brush with strangulation has led him to keep an usually low profile, or if Hannibal’s own measures have proven successful.  
  
He’s taken to rising at dawn, a task made difficult only by the necessity of disturbing Will.  It pulls at something deep in his chest every time he lifts the sleeping boy from the mattress, each time hoping he’ll sleep through the movement, each time disappointed.  Will needs rest.  He sleeps fitfully most nights, whimpering and murmuring, waking suddenly with his eyes skittering until they find Hannibal’s hazel.  
  
Hannibal has nightmares too.  Will doesn’t deserve them.  
  
At the thought, Hannibal pulls on his sweater and returns to the mattress. His hand gently brushes back Will’s hair, already grown longer.  
  
“Keep sleeping, _mielas_.”  
  
He allows himself a moment to twine a lock of the boy’s hair between thumb and forefinger.  The color is so much darker than Mischa’s had been, but just as soft.  With a sigh that ruffles his own bangs, Hannibal moves his hands under Will and lifts him to his chest.  
  
Will makes a soft sound, rubbing his face against Hannibal’s shoulder.  Before Hannibal’s removed the chair - borrowed indefinitely from Silva’s room - from under the doorknob, he feels drool darkening the wool.  
  
The shopping venture cannot be put off any longer, Hannibal acknowledges.  
  
His eyes dark in thought, he creeps down the stairs.  They stop in the narrow bathroom, lights off, Hannibal’s elbows bumping against the walls as he attends to Will’s diaper.  Will is fully awake by the time Hannibal is rubbing baking soda into his teeth, squirming, his eyes lost in the mirror.  As usual.  
  
He lets Will sit on the sink, fists pulling on Hannibal’s sweater, while the older boy cleans himself to the extent possible.  He had been… he had been in worse condition before, and he hadn’t cared then.  But now there’s Will to think of, and disease that inevitably clings to the dirt that follows Hannibal from the crawlspace.    
  
The crawlspace.  Hannibal’s eyes illuminate, smile curling into being.  Of course.  
  
“We’re going on an adventure today, Will.”  
  
***

 

He’s rigged one of Gabija’s aprons into a sling.  Tucked snug against Hannibal’s chest, Will rides comfortably with a hand jammed into his mouth.  He’s zipped ninety percent of the way inside a jacket considerably too large for Hannibal, but just perfect for the both of them.    
  
Hannibal had stolen it from Ausrine for just the occasion.  The boy won’t miss it.  He’s laid up with a mysterious case of food-poisoning.    
  
Hannibal smiles, looking down at the dark curls tickling his chin.  Will’s head turns to track the flight of a bird, the drifting of branches.  Hannibal knows his blue eyes are wide and attentive, and feels a stab at the misfortune of keeping Will caged with him in the attic.  Paper birds and charcoal landscapes are, ultimately, inadequate.  
  
Hannibal picks up the pace, clutching his rolls of paper tighter under his armpit.  The morning is cold, still early, but Hannibal wants to get into town and back by noon.  From his few trips there with Gabija, he knows it’s two hours just for the journey out.  
  
Sweating before long, Hannibal pays little mind to the beauty of the walk.  He leaves that pleasure to Will, instead hyper-focused on scent and sound, clinging close to the trees by the road.  He feels safer away from the orphanage, and that knowledge unsettles him.  It is an illusion.    
  
Hannibal knows what the width of the world has to offer.  Teeth.  
  
It’s with relief that Hannibal finally spots the edges of town, red soviet flags flickering in the breeze.  Bicycles and carts, some trucks and buses, have begun to amble by, waking Will from his quiet doze.  Hannibal allows himself to ease slightly in the presence of many eyes, many witnesses, and jumps to the brick sidewalk.  
  
Some pedestrians, never pausing, eye the pair of boys in one jacket.  Most look right through them to the street beyond.  Ten minutes into the town proper, Hannibal is still looking for the general store.  Unwilling to ask and appear vulnerable, he follows intuition, carefully mapping his progress, memorizing the brick bakeries and tenant houses strung with laundry lines.  
  
Eyes on a street sign, he nearly trips on a small dog that rushes him, sniffing hopefully for scraps.  
  
Will shrieks.  Hannibal’s heart clenches in the moment it takes him to recognize it as a happy sound, and the next second Will is thrashing in the sling, head tilted down towards the filthy dog.  The animal took a hasty jump back at Will’s outburst, but is creeping forward again, tail wagging.  
  
The older boy eyes the creature coldly, but Will is not to be denied.  
  
“Alright, alright, Will,” he murmurs.  He unzips the jacket enough to pull Will from the sling, still keeping hold of the wriggling toddler, listening to the paper beneath his arm crinkle as its crushed.  Will reaches for the dog, cooing nonsense spilling from his lips.  

It isn’t quite talking, but it’s enough for Hannibal.  It counts, and the boy burns with something warm and soft and filling.

Hannibal instantly forgives the dog its existence.   
  
Bending slightly, back aching from the walk, he allows Will a little closer.  Pushing the animal gently away with a foot, Hannibal carefully maintains a safe distance.  Will continues nattering at the animal, looking back as if to check that Hannibal _sees_.  
  
“That’s a dog, Will.  Can you say ‘dog’?  Dog.”  
  
Hannibal says the words in French, as has become habit.  Lithuanian won’t be useful forever.  
  
Will’s eyes narrow for a moment before going back to soak in the animal.  “Do, do, do, do!”  
  
“That’s very good, Will, keep trying.  It’s a bit of a difficult one.  ‘Dog.’”  
  
The animal quickly loses interest at the lack of food.  As it walks away, Will twists to follow it’s progress, his noises taking on a decidedly forlorn tone.  
  
“Never mind that, Will,” Hannibal soothes, finagling a reluctant Will back into the jacket.  “He wasn’t a very handsome dog.  I’ll get you a bloodhound one day.  Bred in England.  Or even the United States.  He’ll be a hundred pounds and copper-red.”  
  
Will hums, little fists tangling against Hannibal’s chest.    
  
“That’s what we’ll do. You like dogs.  Dogs,” he enunciates.  “I don’t understand it, but it’s no matter.  I’ll get you a dog, Will.”  
  
Hannibal repeats the word over and over in different sentences, determined to help Will learn what the little boy finds important.  He’s telling Will about the use of dogs in the second World War as he pushes open the door to what seems to be, finally, the general store.  
  
The bell chimes overhead, floorboards creaking faintly under Hannibal’s feet.  Wooden shelves fill most of the space, packed with a random assortment of goods from canned food to household tools.  Hannibal ignores the shelves and heads for the counter at the back of the store.  
  
A man sits on a stool at the cash register, almost entirely concealed behind an open newspaper. Hannibal sets his slightly crumpled rolls on the counter and waits.  
  
The man turns a page of his paper.  Hannibal feels a tick of irritation.  
  
“Pardon me.”  
  
The man all but yelps, newspaper jerking and wrinkling in his tightened grip.  He lets it fall to a fold and his face, faintly red and immensely bearded, emerges.  For a fraction of a second he stares at the empty space above Hannibal’s head before finding him.  
  
“By God, boy, you gave me a heart attack.”  
  
“The bell rang.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” the man gives the paper a flick, “I’m so used to it I dun hear it.”  
  
At that point, the man’s eyes catch on the rolls of paper on the counter, and he looks back at Hannibal with an eyebrow raised.  The boy decides to head off the question.  
  
“I’m hoping to, to make an exchange.”  
  
The sensation of mild heat rises in Hannibal’s checks at the verbal stumble.  One of his hands unconsciously goes to Will’s curls.  He thinks to pull it away a second later, considering it to be a tell of nerves, but thinks better of it.  The quick withdraw would only magnify such an impression.  
  
The man spots Will for what seems to be the first time, and a smile halfway from a smirk slips into his beard.  
  
“That your brother?”  
  
Hannibal frowns.  Will is his friend.  But the thought of disclaiming him, in any capacity, is abhorrent.  
  
“His name is Will.  He’s in need of a few things.”  
  
“Where’s your parents?” the man asks, amusement suddenly gone, as if it’s only just occurred to him.  He looks around the store like they’ll materialize at the question.  
  
“They’re dead.”  
  
“By God,” the man says, voice low, eyes going soft and critical as he scans the pair of them.  He sets down his newspaper.  
  
Hannibal recognizes that there is an angle to be played here.  Despite his irritation, he takes it.  He licks his lips, casts his eyes down like he’s seen Lika do when asking for another cookie on special occasions.  
  
“We live at the orphanage.  I don’t have any money, but Will is my responsibility.  That’s why I’m hoping to make an exchange… if you’re willing,” he lifts his eyes then, but not his chin.  Lets a few fingers brush the edges of the rolls containing his charcoal drawings.  
  
It’s almost as if Will catches onto the game, because he chooses that moment to whimper.  The man clears his throat, blinking too fast.  
  
“Sure, boy, sure, what you got for me?”  
  
Hannibal swallows down his smile.  He moves to unfurl the first of his drawings, pushing it towards the man and quickly doing the same to the next, until all four of the best of his collection lie open and visible.  
  
The man’s eyes jump from one to another, wide.  The black landscapes capture wild silhouettes of snowy peaks, thick branches, rippling water.  One holds the castle painstakingly etched from memory, lines heavy with loss.  
  
“Where’d you get hold of these?”  
  
“I drew them.  I have nothing to set them with, so be careful not to smudge,” he adds, seeing the man’s fingertips inching towards the dark strokes with mild wonder.  
  
The man’s eyes jump up.  “Di’ you now?  That’s incredible.  Real incredible, these are real good.  I dun have much use, but… well,” he rubs at his beard.  “Go ahead'n pick out what you need, I’ll see what I can do.”  
  
“Thank you,” Hannibal replies, solemn, genuine.  
  
Will is squirming again, so Hannibal unzips Ausrine’s jacket as he turns for the shelves.  He kneels to place Will barefoot on the floor.  Will sways faintly, head swiveling to take in the cluttered store.  Rising, Hannibal takes his hand.  
  
“Come, Will.”  
  
It takes him a couple minutes, Will tottering after him on his toes, to locate the few items intended for children.  He pulls a pacifier and teething ring from the shelf, hoping the pacifier will help with the nightmares.  And the teething ring, well.  Hannibal glances at the drool dribbling down Will’s chin.  
  
On the way back to the counter, Hannibal sees a thick ball of blue yarn and pulls it down as well.  He’s about to take another step, Will pulling his arm in the opposite direction, when he stops.  A small ragdoll, made to look like a dog, sits next to a pile of knitting needles.  
  
Hannibal eyes the toy.  It would be indulgent.  Extravagant, a luxury they cannot presently afford.  His fingers twitch.  Hannibal glances at Will, who’s reaching eagerly for a stack of animal pelts across the isle, bouncing at the knees.  
  
The doll comes off the shelf.  
  
Depositing his selections on the counter, Hannibal takes a step back to address the man again, lifting Will onto his hip.  
  
“I hope it’s not too much.  I know that, the doll.  It’s just that.”  Hannibal hates the hot, creeping sensation crawling up his neck.  
  
Will, timing again impeccable, spots the toy in that moment and comes to Hannibal’s rescue.  
  
“DO!” he squeals, twisting forward to grab at it.  
  
“Will likes dogs,” Hannibal finishes.  
  
The man nods, looking a bit misty-eyed, and Hannibal takes a moment to bask in Will’s effectiveness as a partner.  
  
“Yeah.  Yeah, these things are just fine,” the man makes a show of surveying the items.  “It’s a fair trade, boy, fair trade.”  
  
“Thank you,” Hannibal repeats.  He pockets the teething ring, yarn, and after a moment of thought, the pacifier as well.  Will is too preoccupied patting and cooing at his prize.  
  
“‘Course.  Like I said, fair trade,” the man rumbles, rearranging items on the counter to set aside the drawings.  A broken piece of antler comes into view.  
  
Hannibal’s attention narrows on the item.  The man says something further, but Hannibal just chews his lip.  
  
“Boy?  I said, what’s your name, dun mind me asking?  So I can credit the artist.”  
  
“I apologize,” Hannibal says, clearing his throat.  His eyes skip up and then back to the antler piece.  “It’s Hannibal.”  
  
The man follows his gaze and chuffs a small laugh.  “Alright, Hannibal.  You come back again, you and Will.  And you can take this broken bit of antler too, if you like,” he adds, holding it out to Hannibal.  
  
The boys eyes widen, completely absent calculation.  The man’s offer astounds him.  It is beyond reason, defies everything he’s learned to expect.  They had already reached an agreement.  
  
“I couldn’t.”  
  
“Course you can.  This one, this here,” he gestures at the castle drawing, “Worth two items at least.  Plus, that bit just keeps reminding me I went and broke a tine off a beautiful rack.”  
  
He presses it into Hannibal’s hand.  The boy runs a thumb over the sharp point, still stunned.  
  
“Paid a pretty penny for that rack, too.  Damn foreigners, gouging a man for a couple antlers."  
  
Hannibal’s head snaps up.  “Foreigners?”  
  
“Hm?  Yeah, them sold me the antlers.  Two of ‘em must’ve been Russian. Gave me a sob story about what a rough winter last was, starving in the hills, then charged me a fortune.”  
  
Hannibal can barely hear over the roar of his pulse.  
  
“You alright, Hannibal?”  
  
Will gives a soft squeak, pressing a hand to Hannibal’s neck to get him to loosen his grip.  He immediately does.  
  
“I see. Yes.  I’m fine,” Hannibal forces out, desperate to match the tone and pace he uses when calm.  “Thank you.  Did they.  Are they staying locally?”  
  
“Didn’t ask,” the man says, slow.  “Dun suppose so, though.  Season’s early yet.  No doubt’ll be back though, to take my other arm and leg,” he laughs at his own joke.  
  
“Yes.  Of course.  Thank you.  For it all.  I must get Will back.”  
  
“Sure, sure.  Off you go.”  
  
Hannibal nods, mind sizzling blank and red, quickly tucking Will and his doll back into the jacket.  He heads for the door.  Hands shaking faintly, he slides the broken antler tine into his trouser pocket.  
  
The edges press sharp through the fabric, into his skin.  He breathes out the pain and steps into the cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is that sub-plot I spy? ;D 
> 
> This fic is going to be such a behemoth lol, I can't even help myself. I anticipate three more chapters in the orphanage arc before we move to phase two of the story. *eyebrow waggle*


	5. Burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick, angsty transition chapter!
> 
> unbeta'd

Gabija was waiting for them.    
  
At 11:37 by the kitchen clock, Hannibal pushes open the door.  His head hangs low, nose red with the cold. His legs shudder under the strain of carrying Will both ways.    
  
He barely notices.  The red haze and shaking hands had faded to static somewhere on the road.  He doesn’t remember most of the walk.  
  
“Thank God!”  
  
Hannibal raises his head slowly.  Gabija is standing quickly from a kitchen chair, it’s feet scraping on the linoleum.  A pile of laundry rests on the table, waiting to be darned, and Lika and Titus sit nearby, sharing a stool.  
  
Gabija’s on him in a moment more, hands clutching his face briefly before jumping to his shoulders.  Her eyes are too bright.  Hannibal recoils from the attention, from the touch.  He gets his back to the door and bares his teeth, reflexive.  
  
“Hannibal,” Gabija says quietly.  She swallows.  Stays put.  Blinking fast, her hands go up, placating.  “Hannibal, where have you been?  What’s happened?”  
  
The boy is breathing hard now, eyes darting around the room without recognition.  His hands come up to his middle.  The warm bundle against his chest squirms, awake now, was asleep, Hannibal's thoughts skitter.  Must have fallen asleep on the walk again.  Will fell asleep, and is awake now. 

Will.  
  
As if possessed, Hannibal tears down the zipper of the jacket, frantic hands pulling it off and tossing it to the floor.  His numb fingers fumble with the ties on the apron, yanking it and the toddler free.  The boy drops to his knees on the linoleum, depositing Will in front of him.  
  
He sweeps back Will’s curls with a hurried hand, palms running over his torso, checking for injuries he has no reason to think he’ll find.  Will starts to whimper, eyes caught on Hannibal’s distress.  With a wounded sound, Hannibal pulls the little boy back in, clutching him to his neck, face buried in the curls that still smell faintly of sea spray.  
  
Some moments pass.  Hannibal is still, eyes closed.  Will gives a few quiet, hiccuped sobs against him, and eventually, Hannibal can breath once more.  
  
When he looks up at the kitchen again, he knows it.  Gabija is back in her chair, crying openly.  
  
“I don’t know what to do,” she’s saying in French, knowing that he understands.  “What’s happened to you?  Please tell me what’s happened to you.”  
  
The boy doesn’t answer.  He moves Will to his hip, coming to a shaky stand.  He drags the jacket from the floor and drapes it over the back of a chair.  Digs into the pockets and pulls out the items he got from the store.  Everything but the…  
  
No.  Not right now.  
  
He puts the yarn in front of Gabija, who blinks at it, fat tears still rolling down her cheeks.  Hannibal then puts Will on the counter with his dog.  Runs a pot of water to boil.  Goes to the fridge for the milk.  His movements are stiff, strained.  
  
“Hannibal,” Gabija says to his back. “Please talk to me."  
  
He again ignores her in favor of fixing the milk for Will.  Thumbing a few stray tears from the little boy’s cheeks, he hands him the bottle.  

"Where were you all morning?”  
  
Hannibal puts his hands on the counter on either side of Will and braces his weight against the plastic finish.  He looks up at Will, who looks back, solid and steady.  
  
“I was in town.”  
  
Gabija is quiet for a moment, and Hannibal can practically hear her struggling for the words.  
  
“Why… why did you go to town alone?”  
  
Her voice has taken on a wavering edge that demands Hannibal’s attention, out of curiosity if nothing else, so he turns to her, shoulder pressing against Will’s knee.  He meets her eyes.  
  
“Will needed a few things.”  
  
She laughs then, high and short, and closer to a sob.  Hannibal turns back to check the water on the stove.  
  
“Why didn’t you just ask me for them?  You could have asked me for them.  Why won’t you ever just talk to me, Hannibal?”  
  
He looks at her over his shoulder.  Her palms are pressed to her eyes, head shaking minutely back and forth.  He catches sight of Titus leading Lika out of the kitchen by the hand.  
  
The water starts to boil.  Hannibal carefully drops the teething ring and pacifier into the bubbles, watching them sink beneath the froth to shudder and dance in the roiling heat.  
  
“I know that you don’t have the money, or the time, for such trips,” he says.  
  
He hears Gabija’s hands fall to the table.  She has no answer to that.  
  
“Will is my responsibility,” Hannibal adds.  It hadn't occurred to him to do anything other than take care of it himself.  And even if it had, he wouldn't have done anything differently.  
  
“Have I made you think that?”  Hannibal almost doesn’t hear her speak.  “You are my responsibility, _both of you_ are my responsibility.  Do you know how worried I was?  I find my only clean apron gone, so I look for you.  You’re the only one who might use it.  And you’re nowhere to be found, gone, both of you, to God knows where for hours.”  
  
Something tight builds behind Hannibal’s navel.  He shifts on his feet, jaw twitching once to the left.  
  
“I didn’t mean to concern you.  We were fine.”  
  
“You didn’t look fine when you came in that door shaking like a leaf!”  
  
Hannibal stiffens.  His hand tightens minutely on the handle of the spoon.  He doesn’t move.  
  
Gabija sighs behind him.  “Will you promise not to go out on your own again?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“Why, Hannibal?” She doesn’t sound angry.  The alternative is repulsive to Hannibal.  “Why won’t you ask me for help?”  
  
Something about her tone tells Hannibal how much she thinks he needs it.  Help.  He silently fishes the supplies out of the boiling water, letting them burn his fingertips.  He flicks off the burner and lays the items to cool on a towel.  
  
“If you wish to help, please use that yarn to make Will a sweater, at your convenience.  It’s getting colder.” He pauses.  “I don’t know how to knit.”  
  
Once he’s sure his face is neutral, he turns to look at her again.  Her eyes rove over him, searching for something, and ultimately returning empty-handed.    
  
“Ok, Hannibal,” she sighs.  “I will.  Will you tell me where you got this?”  
  
“I bought it,” he says, choosing to answer the question she meant to ask.  
  
She looks at him a moment before her eyes jump to the jacket resting over the chair.  To the apron still on the floor.  
  
Hannibal feels heat rush up his arms, his neck, at the implication.  
  
“I did.  I traded for everything.  He said it was a fair trade.  Four of my drawing for fi- four of the things I needed.  A fair trade.”  
  
Gabija says nothing in response, only keeps looking at him, and Hannibal feels the heat melt into smooth ice.  His anger feels calm, like a stream just shy of freezing brushing against rock.  
  
He finds he has nothing further to say, the depth of the insult too great to speak from.  Will is watching him silently, mouth still on the emptied bottle, one hand absently stroking his doll.    
  
Hannibal gathers up the boy and all his spoils, the rubber still warm to the touch.  He picks up the jacket as well and heads for the hallway.  
  
He allows himself the pettiness of leaving the apron on the floor.  
  
“Hannibal.”  
  
He gives no response, and takes up the stairs, not stopping when Gabija calls after him again.  He detours on the second floor to return Ausrine’s jacket to the closet.  
  
As he closes the door, he finds himself face to face with Saulius.  The teen looks faintly surprised to see him, a little fearful, and incredibly hostile.  Hannibal doesn’t react, but Will makes a derisive sound, brows knitting together.  Hannibal doesn’t have to fake his serene smile, even as his heart rate ticks up.  
  
“What the hell were you doing with his jacket?” Saulius spits.  
  
“I was borrowing it.  Ausrine had no need for it today.”  
  
Sauilius goes red, even as something lights in his eyes.  Hannibal’s smile flickers, his instincts squeezing at his spine.  
  
“You did it, didn’t you?  You poisoned him.” His voice is both irate and gleeful.  Hannibal is confused, amazed despite himself that such a combination can be achieved.  
  
“Am I meant to affirm the accusation?”  
  
Saulius blinks at him as if Hannibal had chosen to use French.  He shakes it off, finger jabbing at the younger boy.  
  
“You watch yourself, you got that?  I can’t even begin to describe what you’ve got in store for you, I promise you that."  
  
Hannibal forces himself to keep still, fighting the urge to put Will behind his back.  Instead he lets his eyes sweep obviously down to Saulius’s neck.  The fading yellow of old bruises still decorate his flesh like a string of pearls.  
  
The teenager jerks back.  
  
“I appreciate the warning,” Hannibal says, and turns away for the stairs.  He walks casually, carefully so, ears straining for the sound of an attack from behind.  None comes.  
  
He gets the door to the small attic bedroom closed and carefully fits the chair under the handle.  Breathing still even, he sets Will on the mattress and shows him the pacifier.  Will ignores it in favor of handing Hannibal his doll.  
  
“Do,” he says solemnly, waving it at him until Hannibal takes it.  
  
Turning it in his hands, the boy regards it carefully for the first time.  It’s soft to the touch, a grey-blue and only very lightly stuffed.  
  
“It’s beautiful, Will,” Hannibal says, and hands it back.  “Just like you.”  
  
The toddler smiles, clutching it in the crooks of his elbows.  He reclines to fall back on the mattress, shaking the doll up and down and back and forth, giggling softly.  
  
Hannibal looks at him laid out on the bare mattress.  There is no bed frame. The blanket has holes, the unfinished walls merely splintering wood.  They have a lamp with no shade and the solitary window is spiraled with cracks in the top-most pane.  
  
The boy looks at Will amongst the filth and nearly chokes on the unfairness.    
  
He wants to break things, shatter wood and glass and bones in his hands, dash his own head against the wall until it bleeds.  He wants to burn down the orphanage with everyone in it, burn the forest, the town, torch his palms in the flames.  
  
Instead he sets the antler tine on the window ledge.  He shows Will the pacifier again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't even mean for this chapter to happen?? The angst just waltzed right in and punched me in the jaw and said WRITE ME. 'orz 
> 
> This was really just an excuse for me to explore poor Hannibal. All these chapters are going to need restructuring when I'm done. xD 
> 
> Thanks as always for reading ;u;


	6. Drift

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some fluff to heal your wounds from the last chapter, and some angst to tear them open again. x'D
> 
> Listen to "Window" by The Album Leaf while you read if you want to hear what I looped while writing.
> 
> unbeta'd!

A bell jingles overhead.  Hannibal steps inside, fighting the door closed against the wind.  Blinking against the sting, he rubs a hand over his raw cheeks and breathes deep.  
  
The air inside is warm and dry, rich with the musk of paper.  Maple shelves line the shop, crammed with hardbound books.  His tongue runs over his lips once.  
  
Pulling his eyes from the books, the boy drops to his knees to remove the backpack slung over his shoulders, already unzipped for airflow.  He extracts a disgruntled Will from the blanket cocoon within.  Hannibal leans in, meaning to kiss Will’s forehead in apology, and finds Do shoved in his face instead.  
  
“Will.”  
  
His call goes unheeded, Will, unwrapped, taking off among the shelves.  Hannibal decides the toddler’s mirth sounds nothing short of a cackle.  
  
Will turns the corner labeled “Mystery,” and Hannibal follows quickly.  He locates the spot of blue easily against the dark covers of the novels.  
  
He snatches Will up, fingers tangling in the soft wool of Will’s new sweater.  Gabija had handed it to Hannibal wordlessly that morning.  The boy reciprocated the gesture by informing Gabija that he intended to go to town that afternoon.  She merely suggested he take the grocery backpack, and was forgiven.  
  
Will is shrieking his delight at being captured, whacking Hannibal with Do until the boy drapes him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.  
  
“You absolute menace,” Hannibal hushes him, amused and mortified in a tangle, glad at the lack of other customers. 

The smell of floral decay reaches Hannibal moments before the voice does.  
  
“Can I help you children?”  
  
Hannibal turns, slowly pulling Will down and into his arms.  The toddler is instantly silent.    
  
A woman regards them with eyes narrowed by age, wrinkles set everywhere they can find space.  She stands behind the counter, fingers running absently along the edge of a service bell.  She’s draped in numerous shawls, ill fit, but plush and bright.  
  
“Pardon me, ma’am, I apologize for the noise.”  
  
She hums, waits for him to continue.  Her eyes seem to be caught on the largest hole in Hannibal’s sweater.  He swallows down the sudden sour tang in his jaw.  
  
“I’m wondering if you carry any books in English.”  
  
She hums again, head pulling slightly to the right as she regards him, eyes thinning further.  Skeptical, Hannibal identifies.  Because of his appearance.  
  
“You’ll find them over there,” she gestures with a hand half-lifted, unworthy of the energy.  
  
Hannibal’s mouth flicks down.  He levels it quickly, brightening the eyes of the mask.  “Thank you, ma’am.” 

He eases Will to the ground, this time keeping a careful grip on the boy’s hand.  Will makes no further attempts at evasion.  
  
Wandering the general direction the ancient bookkeep had pointed, Hannibal scans the shelves until he finds one dubbed “Foreign Language.”  He hears the shop bell at the front and steps closer, eyes skimming the titles.    
  
It looks like gibberish.  He can pick out the few French and Russian, but what distinguishes English and Spanish?  Which is closer to French?  
  
The uncertainty crawls over his skin.  He picks Will up again, sighs into his hair.  “Did your father teach you any English?” he asks, eyes closed, breathing against Will’s skin.  
  
Will twists to plant his hands on either side of Hannibal’s head.  Blue eyes again serious. 

“Ni-ni,” he says.  Hannibal recently came to understand that to be his name.  This time, the address is followed by a string of nonsense in which Hannibal is made to realize he’s being deliberately obtuse.  
  
To punctuate the sentiment, Will releases his face to wave Do in the direction of the bookkeep.  She’s still at the counter, now speaking with a middle-aged customer.  The man nods and steps back in the direction of the front of the shop.  Her gaze follows him for a moment before finding Hannibal’s.  She raises a single, practically hairless eyebrow.  
  
Will levels the boy with a few more choice, nonexistent words, and settles against his collarbone, confident his point has been made.  Ignoring the sticky feeling of failure, Hannibal allows his feet to take him back to the counter.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
Hannibal just barely manages to unlock his jaw.  “I was unable to locate an English-French dictionary.  Do you have one in stock?”  
  
She eyes him again, obviously, thoroughly.  “Those foreign dictionaries are expensive.”  
  
Hannibal’s nostrils flare, flooding his throat with warm paper and torrid women’s perfume.  A hand lands on the counter.  His fingers twitch once.

"I see.  Would you mind quantifying expensive?”  
  
“7000 rubles,” the woman says, unblinking.  
  
His fingers twitch again, hand sliding from the countertop.  “Fortunate that I asked then.  I didn’t bring enough with me.”  
  
“Of course,” the bookkeep says, thick and tacky, like syrup gone dry.  Hannibal imagines flipping the cash register, watching the coins spiral and bounce, cash fluttering into the cracks between the floorboards.    
  
He imagines shoving the service bell down her throat.  
  
“Please set aside a copy for me, if you would.  I’ll return later in the week.”  
  
The woman nods, already looking down her ledger.  She doesn’t believe him.  The thought echoes raw off the chambers of his mind, sparking and burning on the rebound.    
  
Hannibal stares at her lowered head a moment more before turning and bundling Will back into the backpack.  The toddler goes without a fight, luminous eyes gripping Hannibal’s attention.  He presses a kiss to Will’s head, successful this time, soothing himself rather than Will.  He slips his shoulders into the straps.  
  
He leaves.  The bell chimes an obnoxious parting shot.    
  
Outside, the wind picks up his hair immediately.  His bangs, too long, flick and toss over his eyes.  
  
He winds his way several blocks, follows the smell of baking bread and carefully navigates around patches of ice.  His fingers are numb in his pockets.  It further curdles Hannibal’s mood, dark and volatile, self-directed.  The errand had been foolish in every regard.  
  
He picks up the pace.  The door to the general store sticks in the cold, and Hannibal throws a shoulder at it, face rigidly blank.  It pops open, sends both Hannibal and the bell above flying.  He finds his feet, the shrill jingle grating against the back of his skull.  Are bells necessary in every store in Lithuania?    
  
“Hannibal!”  The store owner heard the bell this time.  “Come’n in, boy, come in.”  He’s polishing something behind the counter, smile easy, no less lost in his beard than before.  
  
“Good afternoon.”  Hannibal takes a step towards the man and stops, eyes fixed to a frame mounted on the back wall.  
  
The charcoal drawing of a castle, purchased for a ragdoll and antler tine, sits proudly caged by polished wood.  
  
The man follows his gaze, turns his head to look.  His smile gains more teeth and he laughs.  
  
“D’you like it?  I know the artist personally.”  He winks.  
  
Unsure how best to respond, Hannibal merely nods and approaches the counter.  The man puts aside the rag and silverware and leans his elbows on the counter.  
  
“Jokes aside, boy, your drawings been a hit, all.  Sold the other three in days after hanging up that masterpiece.  That one’s mine to keep I think, can’t hear a price I like for it.  Where’s Will?”  
  
Will answers for himself, giving a slightly muffled sound from the open backpack.  The man blinks a few times, then erupts into more laughter.  Hannibal stands rooted for a moment, tangled in whether or not the laughter is malicious.  His eyes go to the frame on the wall.    
  
He breathes out slowly.  His fists, hidden in his pockets, uncurl.  
  
Prickling moisture suddenly builds, unwarranted and unauthorized, in his eyes.  He fights it, hides behind the action of freeing Will.    
  
The little boy immediately recognizes where they are and hums in satisfaction, Hannibal setting him down before Will gets stuck on the man’s eyes.  He wraps his little hands around Hannibal’s leg, Do swinging gently, catching the fabric and building static.  
  
“Had him in your backpack, that’s something.  Even better’n the jacket.  You're a creative type, there's the truth.”  
  
“Thank you,” Hannibal manages, manners filling in his gaps.  He approximates something near a smile.  “I’m glad you like the drawing.”  
  
“I do, I certainly do.  Now, to business, because I know, you dun brave this weather for nothing.  What you got for me today?”  
  
Hannibal lifts the backpack.  He pulls forth two scrolls, easing loose the sharp folds formed by the shared journey with Will.  He reveals the forest from the attic window, river carving swaths through the trees, cardinal in flight, suspended in ballpoint ink.  Then Gabija at the sink, half turned away, eyes on the window and rendered in the sharp shadows of dusk.  
  
The man shakes his head, hand on his jaw.  
  
“It’s just the two.  I’ve been occupied caring for Will.”  It’s almost not a lie.  He doesn’t mention the half dozen drawings tucked beneath the mattress, all of Will.  “I thought perhaps ink might appeal to more potential buyers.”  
  
The man remains silent, hand rubbing patterns into his beard.  When he finally looks up, his eyes are tight at the edges, bright, crowded by his eyebrows.  Sad.  
  
Hannibal blinks, skin too tight, certain he’s mistaken.  The context precludes sadness.  Nothing has occurred here to illicit such a response.  
  
“These are really something special, my boy,” the man says, quiet.  “How old’re you anyway?”  
  
“Ten years old.  I’ll be eleven at the end of January.”  
  
“Eleven at the end of January,” the man repeats, hand dropping to the drawings.  It springs back up just as quickly to press at his eyes.  “What price you thinking for these?”  
  
Hannibal pauses.  His eyes jump once more to the framed castle.  He wets his lips.  “I need 7000 rubles.”  
  
“Do you now?  That’s a specific sum.”  His hand has dropped again to regard Hannibal, no less warm, but perhaps just as sad, if that’s what it is.  
  
“There’s a book I need.”    
  
The man waits, expecting greater detail.    
  
“Will’s starting to talk, and I don’t want him to have a strong accent.  When we move to America.”  
  
“You’re moving to America?”  
  
“Not now,” Hannibal clarifies, forces himself to explain.  The amount must be justified.  “Not for a long time.  But we will, and when we do, Will's going to speak perfect English.”  
  
The man’s smile returns.  “Well now, well, I can’t argue with that.”  He looks up, rubs his chin with his knuckles.  “Tell you this.  I need some help today, back is been seizing up.  So, I’ll give you 10,000 rubles for the drawings plus two hours your time.  Finish up this polishing, maybe tidy the dust.  I’ll take you home in the truck so you beat the dark.”  
  
The last sentence, added as an afterthought, has Hannibal taking a half-step back, pulling Will with him.  He curses himself for the reflex.  There is nothing to fear from this man, he knows, has no doubt.  He tries to shake the ice from his spine, to answer.  
  
The man looks at him, speaks first.  “Actually, can’t.  My wife’ll take you home.”  He picks up the silverware again, rubs over the same spot in circles.  
  
Hannibal lets out a breath he hadn’t meant to hold.  He wants to decline the ride, decline what resembles help, but no longer feels sick with it. 

“That's unnecessary.”  
  
“Nonsense, boy, won’t have it, I’d be robbing you otherwise, and I can’t do without that help.”  
  
Hannibal considers it, hand resting in Will’s dark hair.  He cannot deny the practicality.  It’s too late to stay out otherwise, too cold, and Will is still so small.  They need the extra rubles.  
  
“Ni-ni?”  Hannibal looks down at Will, sees him pointing at the animals pelts.  “Go da?  Da?”  He’s been patient, Hannibal can tell, waited to ask as long as he could.  
  
“ _Vous pouvez toucher la fourrure. Rien d'autre_ , Will, _entendu_?”  
  
Will blinks at him, rapid, his way of nodding.  He hands Do off and totters towards the bin of fox and rabbit pelts.  Hannibal watches his hands reach, run slow and gentle into the fur, exposing the white undercoat with each stroke.  He gets a grip on a dark grey pelt and sits down with it, wide eyes tracing the patterns brushed by his fingers.  Will is in no hurry to leave.  
  
“Alright.  We have a deal.”  
  
***  
  
Hannibal’s pockets are heavy with paper notes when he climbs into the passenger side of the truck.  He settles Will onto his lap, backpack laid to the side.  
  
The toddler grips a scrap of grey rabbit pelt, cut just for him, tightly in his fist.  
  
Mrs. Dabnys climbs behind the wheel, pulling the door shut with some effort.  She’s slight, bulk doubled by a thick, weathered work jacket.  Her brown hair is short, tousseled by the weather, but the effect suits her.  She smiles at the two boys again and starts the engine.  
  
Near five o’clock, the man now named Mr. Dabnys went upstairs to fetch his wife.  She appeared, dwarfed in her husband’s shadow, and bestowed upon Hannibal a smile just as bright as the one she presented to Will.  
  
“You’re living at the orphanage, Hannibal?” Mrs. Dabnys asks him now, confirming or probing.  Perhaps just starting a conversation, at the same place it will end.  
  
Will's eyes jump from his slip of fur to the woman beside them, back and forth, interested but untrusting, distracted.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Her gloved hands squeeze the steering wheel, then slide lower.  “I’m sorry to hear that.”  
  
Hannibal looks out his window.  The glass glitters with thin condensation, crystallized, painting the city outside in brittle watercolor.  Shapes blur past, smeared by ice, unfocused.  Hannibal wants to touch the glass, suddenly unsure what's real.  
  
He doesn’t.  And he doesn’t answer.  
  
Mrs. Dabnys glances at them.  She fiddles with the plastic vents on the dashboard, still blowing cold air.  “I hear you took a fancy to that antler Alls broke.  Do you like deer?”  
  
Hannibal remembers a lock of blonde hair, curled in the snow, blood sticking to the strands.  
  
“I do.”  
  
“Pretty animals,” Mrs. Dabnys remarks, genuine.  Hannibal doesn’t have to look to know.  They are.  
  
“They’re fragile,” Hannibal whispers, the words sliding from last winter, past his teeth and out of his grip.  One of his hands comes up into his bangs, pulls hard before letting go, face impassive.  
  
Mrs. Dabnys hums in agreement, glances at him again.  There is a tension there, a fear, a need to accomplish something.  Hannibal can’t place it and is too lost, too caught between then and now and the images in the window, to try.  
  
“Did Alls show you the newest antlers he got?  One set’s three meters across.”  
  
“He didn’t,” Hannibal answers, answers only because of the soft sweep of fur pressed to his neck, the glance of Will’s fingers against his skin.  
  
“Next time then.  He complains about the price, but that pair of hunters finds the biggest bucks.”  
  
“The Russians?” Hannibal hears himself ask, because he knows where this is going, sees it clearly in the glass, as clearly as he sees himself and Will from where he stands on the outside of it all.  The inevitability crushes him so completely that he feels like vapor, disbursed by the exhalations of his own lungs.  
  
“Yes.  You know them?”  
  
“I met them once,” Hannibal says from somewhere else.  He's in the snow on his knees, hands shaking, fingers skating through blood and vomit, reaching, eyes wide and seeing everything he never wanted to see.  
  
“Oh!  Maybe you can visit them at the Inn then, next time you’re in town.  They'll be here until the thaw, I think Alls said.  Be good to see a familiar face I imagine?”  
  
“Yes.  Perhaps I will.”  His whisper is lost to the crunch of gravel, the truck pulling into the drive.  The orphanage, obscured by ice and memory, comes into view.  
  
“Well.  Here we are.  Take care, Hannibal.”  
  
“Thank you for the ride,” the boy intones, flat, incapable of inflection.  He gets the door open on the third try at the handle.  Slides out onto stiff knees.  Almost forgets, drags the backpack with.  “Thank you,” he repeats, uncertain it had been said.  
  
A pause.  “It was no problem.” The words come a little slow and desperate at the end.  Mrs. Dabnys hadn’t achieved what she’d hoped.  
  
Hannibal shuts the door.  He adjusts Will is his arms.  The boy keeps slipping, and Hannibal shifts him again, tightens his grip, pulls him in until Will’s hair mingles with his own.  
  
“ _Vous êtes ici. Je suis ici. Il est 5:30 le 19 Décembre, et je suis dans la banlieue de Palanga, Lituanie_.”  
  
He repeats the words from the gravel to the kitchen, repeats them until Gabija looks up from the stove.  Will’s hands are on Hannibal's face, soothing lines into his eyebrows, over his nose, across his jaw.  Hannibal allows himself to be drawn back, pulled safely into the blue eyes on his.  
  
“Hannibal,” Gabija greets.  She looks closer, puts down the spoon.  “Hannibal?  You’re shaking.”  
  
“It’s cold.”  
  
Gabija sighs and picks up the spoon.  Turns back to her cooking.  “Go warm up.  I won’t say you shouldn’t have gone out today.  I could have stopped you.”  
  
“Of course,” Hannibal says, wonders if she knows she’s lying.  
  
“When you come downstairs for dinner, you’re going to tell me who just drove you home.”  
  
“Of course,” he says again, already in the hallway.  
  
He doesn’t see the stairs on the way up, sees only Will until he falls onto their mattress, finding the chair in place at the door by his own hand, the thin blanket wrapped around them.   Will tucks Do between their chests, his warm breath sweeping across Hannibal’s collarbone.  
  
Hannibal falls asleep between one blink and the next.  He dreams of frost and barren trees, of felled deer with their fur caked in red.  Too young to have antlers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really debated what points I wanted to hit in this one and it ended up being quite understated. I promise more happened for the plot here than might be obvious. xD The setup for this arch is officially complete - the next chapter is going to punch us all in the teeth, so brace yourselves. :'''D
> 
> As for some of the details here, I always think of Will, beneath the pain and anger, as incredibly playful. And Hannibal, I think as a general rule, dislikes and distrusts men, or at least finds them banal as an adult. His canonical closest relationships are with Mischa, Lady Murasaki, Chiyoh, Bedelia, Alana, Abigail... and Will. Interesting, right?
> 
> Most importantly, thank you so much for the comments and kudos, seriously, seeing them 10000% makes my day and drives me to keep giving this story my all for you guys.


	7. Strike

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry for the delay! The holidays, [the hannigram exchange](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5528375), work, and [my new kitten Mischa](http://bluberryjelly.tumblr.com/post/136234936805/yes-this-is-my-new-child), slowed me down, but I hope it's worth the wait!
> 
> Warning for that minor character death tag and a few of the others. Tread with caution, lovelies!
> 
> unbeta'd

_Hannibal’s hands are cold, stiff, half-buried in the top layers of snow, powder soft.  His vision swims, crimson pooling almost black around her, staining her coat, her hair, blurring light and dark, painting everything in shades of red_ —  
  
The boy wakes with a start, edging back quickly from the scene that hangs like icicles, poised to fall, behind his eyes.  He knocks over the lamp, cries out, flinches at the thud.    
  
Will stirs but doesn’t wake, pacifier working between his teeth.  
  
The sight breaks Hannibal loose from his panic.  His breathing slows, catching on every other inhale.  He shakes his head, shakes loose the icicles and clutching branches, runs a hand through his bangs, damp with sweat.  
  
The room is dark, sun still far from the horizon.  He rights the lamp by feel, careful to guard the silence.  Tucks the blanket, knocked aside, back around Will, and gets up from the floor.  
  
Hannibal’s fingers brush the cool glass of the window, forehead following, resting against the milky black.  The light from the moon catches and drips from the flaws in the glass.  
  
He hasn’t been sleeping.  He calculates, process slowed by the astringent cotton of sleep deprivation.  Forty-two straight nights interrupted by nightmares.  By memories, set loose during a conversation in a truck.  
  
Letting the night outside pull his fever through the glass, Hannibal drifts.  
  
_His stomach upends, twisting, flooded with iron, Mischa_ —  
  
Hannibal lurches forward, gagging, knees sliding on the rough wood, head connecting with the window.  Tears spill over in twin steaks and Hannibal is up, spinning around, looking for something to rend, to shatter, finding only the lamp, and Will—  
  
Twisted expression blanking, Hannibal slowly lowers the lamp, poised above his head, aimed for the door.  He places it down again, carefully, silently, where it belongs.  
  
The boy watches Will sleep, stock still, silent in the middle of the attic room.  He watches until light ghosts over the hills in orange hues.    
  
Fingers twitching alive first, Hannibal steps forward, feet numb.  He reaches behind the mattress and pulls forth the English-French Dictionary, then the English Syntax book.  The second had come at a discount, purchased from an old woman very embarrassed to see him again.  
  
He crawls back under the blanket, tugging the books with.  Opens to the chapter on vowels, and imagines climbing inside the pages.  He mouths the silent sounds into Will’s hair.  
  
***  
  
“Dog,” Hannibal says in English, slowly, carefully.  “Dog,” he repeats, tasting the word.  It’s awkward, dense, much like the animal itself.  
  
Will totters down the stairs after him, silent, eyes more on Hannibal’s face then where he’s stepping, too confident in Hannibal’s grip on his hand.  The thought brushes something soft in Hannibal’s ribcage, something sore and hurting from the night.  
  
Everything else feels distant, viewed from underwater.  Adjusting the books in his arms, Hannibal breaths deep, trying to push oxygen into his lungs, his brain.  Instead he gets a mouthful of dust.  
  
“We’ll get some fresh air,” he tells Will, French coming slow.  He reverts to Lithuanian.  “I haven’t shown you the river yet, Will.”    
  
It isn’t warm enough yet, not by half.  But the idea grips Hannibal with necessity.  He feels like a sheet of glass, melted down and reformed too many times, blown too thin.  Prone to shatter.  He needs to get out.  
  
Will, as well, has been quiet lately.  Hannibal swallows against a yawning pull deep in his gut, unpleasant.  
  
Passing into the kitchen, Hannibal pauses at the door to pull down Will’s sweater, layered with a hand-me-down from Titus, and adjusts the handkerchief adapted as a scarf.  He puts Lika’s boots on Will’s feet, too big but sufficient.  
  
“Where are you two going?”  
  
Hannibal almost jumps, feels his skin leap while the rest of him stays still.  He hadn’t noticed anyone, hadn’t smelled anyone.  
  
He raises his eyes, blank, to Will’s chin from where he kneels.  He makes more unnecessary adjustments to Will’s clothes, slow.  He almost smiles when Will gently pushes his hands away.    
  
“I’m taking Will to the river,” Hannibal answers.  He raises to a stand.  Ignores the lilt of dizziness.  
  
Gabija looks him over.  Addresses him, like always now, in French.  “I don’t think so.  You’re going back to bed.”  Her hand reaches out, falls.  It twitches once at her side, runs absently down her apron.  
  
“I’m fine.  Some air will be more beneficial.”  He idly looks for the word in English, learned last week, and draws up a blank.  Frustration slides down his throat, dulled.  
  
Gabija wants to argue.  Wants to ask what’s been wrong.  He can see it written on her face, spelled in the shape of her eyebrows, the press of her lips.  
  
A bang and a shriek echoes from somewhere upstairs, followed by crying.  Hannibal doesn’t bother attempting to identify the voice, only grateful as Gabija’s head lifts, distracted.  
  
“Don’t be long,” she says, hands full of her skirts as she heads for the stairs.  “Don’t you dare get wet, either of you!”  
  
Hannibal watches her disappear into the hallway, and then slips outside, silent.  
  
The gravel shifts underfoot.  Hannibal forces himself to take a head start, looking back at Will a yard away.  The little boy walks awkwardly in the oversized boots, lower jaw stuck out in concentration.  He stops, looks up at Hannibal from beneath his eyelashes, expression dark.  
  
“Ni-ni.  No.  Uppy!”  He raises both hands in the air, palms open.  When Hannibal doesn’t move, Will’s chin drops, scowling.  “Uppy, Ni-ni!”  
  
Hannibal smiles, Will lighting the shadows behind his eyes.  “I’ve spoiled you,” the boy says, hefting Will onto his hip, juggling the books.  
  
“No.”  Will’s arms come around Hannibal’s neck, a little too tight.  Hannibal gets a mouthful of the boy’s hair, smiles around it.  
  
“I’m afraid so.”  
  
Unsteady on the slide of gravel, Hannibal focuses on balance.  They touch the edge of the forest, Hannibal with relief.  The pair disappears into the embrace of barren trees.  
  
Hannibal makes appropriate comments as Will points out what he sees with silent urgency, sometimes cries of joy.  His exclamations startle a rabbit, capture the attention of a pair of shrikes nestled among dry thorns.  
  
The boy winds the way to the river on autopilot.  He puts Will down to stand on the exposed earth, damp with clinging snow and ice melt.  Helps him over thick roots, under low, grasping branches.  Will’s eyes are bright, looking back at him every few steps, happy sounds bubbling forth.  
  
A coil of warmth and relief threads its way across Hannibal’s shoulders, down his back.  Will is happy.  Will is fine.    
  
So Hannibal can ignore it.  The spider’s silk of exhaustion, spun tight around him, crushing his ribs, his clarity.  Irrelevant.  
  
Will laughs when they reach the river, breaking free from Hannibal’s hand, instantly enchanted.  He makes a rush for the water, trips over in the boots.  He picks himself up just as fast, hands smeared with mud, and looks back at Hannibal with a flash of chagrin.  At the shallow river’s edge, Will crouches, balanced with his elbows on his knees, hands clenching and unclenching.    
  
“Don’t touch the water, Will.  It’s too cold,” Hannibal orders, stopping the little boy’s reach instantly.  
  
Will makes a whine of protest, but doesn’t try again.  He watches the water trickle by, creeps out a foot to nudge a loose stone.  
  
Hannibal unzips his jacket, warmed by the walk.  He settles in the shadows of wide tree roots nearby, wincing slightly at the chill of rotting leaves.  Eyes on Will, nose, ears on the forest.  
  
The winter sun dances pleasantly over the swaying branches.    
  
Will stands, looking around quickly.  _The snow is thick_.  He spots a stick, grabs it up and returns to his spot.  _The wind catches Hannibal’s hair, burns his chapped skin._   Submerging the end in the water, Will giggles, creeping a bit closer on the damp stones.  
  
_Hannibal’s hands sting in the sn_ ow, digging to expose the crudely made trap.  Sprung, the stick broken in two, with nothing to show for it.  Hannibal’s lower lip pulls up between his teeth, his only reaction beyond the crash of his heart dropping.  
  
“Nothing, Hann?”  Mischa’s voice a melody, chimes in the breeze.  She’s a few meters behind, leaning against a tree, tan coat brushed with snow.  
  
“No.”  He stands, rubs the butt of his hand against his forehead.  “I’m sorry, Mischa,” the apology crawls from his throat, flat, ragged, “I thought, this time.”  
  
“S’ok.  You saw a barn.  Maybe, we can steal milk again?”  
  
The thought bites at his flesh worse than the wind.  He looks to his sister, too small for her five years, too mature for the same.    
  
He denies the despair clutching at his windpipe.  “That won’t be necessary.”  He busies himself with the trap, struggles to reset it with blue, trembling fingers.  Reaching up to the nearest branch, he snaps off a twig, brittle with cold.  “We’ll find something of our own.”  
  
“Ok, Hann.  I know you can, you can hunt anything.”    
  
He looks back at her.  Mischa’s smile cuts the cold, bright and warm, encouraging.   For him.  She wanders from the tree, bends to trace shapes into the snow with a gloved hand.  
  
“Anything?” He struggles to put humor in his voice, struggles to find it buried beneath the hunger.  Turns away again.  “I suppose I should set a larger trap.  Perhaps we’ll get a rhinoceros, or an elephant.”  
  
He hears Mischa’s intake of breath, anticipates her laugh.  He hears a rush of air instead, a thump, the crush of snow, sudden in the absolute stillness.  
  
Iron, rich and warm, drifts, carried on the moist air.  The boy doesn’t move, stops breathing against a knife’s edge pressed to his lungs.  His voice is smothered, choked beneath the weight of his every organ, each retreating into his throat.     
  
The laughter doesn’t come.  
  
Hannibal stands slowly, the moment strung across hours, centuries, dripping with dew turned to iron, filling his chest.  He turns in centimeter increments, shoulders leading, jaw trailing, resisting.    
  
He sees her.  
  
Pain lances down his throat, through his heart, shredding and yanking the moorings, separating it from his chest.  His tongue is too heavy in his mouth, he can’t breath, helpless as his lungs pull in only the cold.  
  
A single sob shatters from him, and he feels too much, feels nothing, ice spiraling, crackling, crystallizing in his blood, his bones.  Aware distantly that he slips, falls to his hands in the snow.  Watching as his stomach empties itself of nothing, acid splattering white.  Watching as the snow around Mischa dips under warm blood, pooling in a slow rush from the shaft of an arrow.  
  
Hannibal’s eyes fix on her golden hair, sprawled and reaching, hiding her face, ends dancing in the wind.  Red whispers onto the strands, voices approaching, grasping at Hannibal in tendrils.  
  
“Сюда.”  
  
_“There’s something wrong with you too—”_  
  
“ Я ударил-то—”  
  
_“You’re like his pet—”_  
  
“ Я говорю вам!”  
  
The voices don’t match, coming from different directions.  There’s crying, and it’s not Mischa, not Mischa ever again, but the sound pulls at a place near her hold on his torn heart.  
  
Hannibal jolts, gasps awake in the afternoon light, blinking fast, wet.  He’s disoriented, the sun too bright, too low, not enough snow, not as warm as it had been.  The river crawls where he had seen a pool of blood, and Will stands where Mischa had fallen.  
  
The little boy isn’t alone.  Saulius stands over him, crowding him at the water’s edge, back to Hannibal.  Will is looking up at him, blue eyes wide and angry, the dark of the ocean escaping in streaks down his face.  
  
The sight of Will’s wrath, untainted, uncomplicated, sets something loose in Hannibal’s chest, it’s wings unfurling, catching and pulling with talons meant to heal, to scar.    
  
Saulius shoves the child, and the feeling crushes inwards, suspended.  Will falls to his bottom with a shout, landing in the shallow water, wet to his ribs.  His anger glitters with pain and surprise.  
  
Hannibal stands.  
  
“Where’s your master now, pet?” Saulius jeers, foot coming to rest on Will’s tiny stomach, pushing him further into the water. “You run away from him?  No one could blame you.”  
  
Hannibal approaches, slow, silent, calm.  A calm previously untouched, unfolding dense and absolute.  His face is blank.  Tears drying cold on his cheeks.  He can feel his blood moving, thick, slowed in his veins.  
  
Saulius applies more pressure, Will’s anger blinking out as he starts to cry in earnest, fear finding his voice.  “No!  Bad!  Ni-ni!  Ni-ni!”  
  
Hearing his name pitched into a squeak, Hannibal bends to caress a rock, larger than his fist, picking it up.  He measures the weight in his hand, fingers gripping the grainy surface, feels it pull warmth from his skin.  
  
Just behind Saulius, Hannibal extends his arm.  Back, forward, up, in an arching swing, rock crashing into Saulius’s skull.  The musical crunch of bone, and the teenager starts to drop, strings cut, instantly caught in a horse-collar by Hannibal’s free hand, redirected to splash into the water away from Will.  Face down.  
  
Hannibal blinks slowly at the rock, painted with a stripe of bright red.  He lets it fall from his palm to the water, ragged exhale falling with it.  Looks back to Will.  
  
The toddler has stopped crying.  He extends dripping hands, wordlessly asking to be picked up.  Hannibal acquiesces.  
  
Will has him soaked through in seconds.  Hannibal pays it no mind beyond an awareness to hurry.  He feels awake, alive, thrums with it.  
  
“We never saw Saulius here today, Will, do you understand?”  
  
Will nods, hiding his face in Hannibal’s neck, hands wrapped in his collar.  He's shivering.     
  
“Good boy.  You were very good, _mielas_ , very brave.”  He repeats the praise into Will’s curls, murmurs it over and over in every language he knows, petting Will’s head.    
  
He turns Saulius’s face with a foot, positioning the mess of blood and hair down, staging it as a fall.  The water pulls at the teenager where he’s sprawled.  His eyes are open, vacant, partially submerged.  
  
Hannibal put him there, took the light from his eyes.  Took what he didn’t deserve to keep.  Liquid silver threads, rich and strong, spread from Hannibal’s heart to his fingers, lacing power into his blood.  The boy’s face splits open on a smile, pulls his lips into a jagged line.    
  
“Let’s get you warmed up, _mielas_.  Did you like the river?”  He strides forward for the books, maneuvers them under his armpit, around Will.  Feels Will nod against his skin. “We’ll come back another day, when it’s warmer.  No one will bother you then.  Not ever again.”  
  
He takes Will from the river, from the forest to the orphanage, confident they’ll return undetected by Gabija.  Confident that he will not be caught.      
  
Confident that tonight, he will sleep undisturbed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been visualizing this chapter for a long time and it was still hard to make myself put down some of the words! The angst/fluff tags have been altered to account for the developing balance. xD Although the angst in this story will continue to be a little sideways of the typical definition.
> 
> Chapter 8 is going to get messy! I thought about including the next scene in this chapter, but I think these two parts will stand best alone.
> 
> To heal your wounds in the interim, may I suggest picturing adult Will and Hannibal slow dancing to [La Vie En Rose](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IJzYAda1wA) in a very ostentatious living room.
> 
> I seriously adore you all. Thank you as always, from the bottom of my heart, for reading and commenting. Please feel free to come harass [me on tumblr](http://bluberryjelly.tumblr.com/). Happy New Year!


	8. Lie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised a mess. And so you shall have! ...In the _next_ chapter. Because apparently I can't resist excruciating buildup.
> 
> unbeta'd as usual

By the time Hannibal pulls off his sweater, Will is giggling, his fear and shock fallen away, scattered like leaves.  The wet wool sticks, catching on his ears.  Will’s accent chatters with his teeth but the meaning is clear.  
  
“Ad-ew, ad-ew!  Ad-ew, mau-mau!” he croons at the attic ceiling, reaching for Hannibal.  
  
“Hush, Will,” Hannibal urges, indulgent smile softening his mouth, excitement setting a tremor to his hands.  They had slipped past Gabija in the kitchen, too busy preparing lunch to hear the door.  His ears remain on the stairs.  Gabija will look for them soon, he’s certain of it.  They cannot be wet when she does.    
  
The thought conducts a tangle of electricity, almost painful in its intensity as it spreads.  
  
Hannibal places a knee on the mattress, reaching to hide Will’s soaked clothes under the far corner.  He tears off his own, stuffing them in with the rest, and glances back at Will.  The little boy is buck naked and shivering, smile in his eyes.  A bubble of affection and amusement spills against the buzz in Hannibal’s blood, strips his nerves raw with new joy.  One of a shared secret, shared accomplishment.  
  
The attic doesn’t seem as dark.  Suddenly feels something like home.  
  
The scent of seasoned poultry drifts under the door.  Hannibal remembers to hurry.  He yanks his pajama shirt on, gets an arm stuck, nearly tears the seam of a sleeve, laughing.  He wrestles Will into a fresh diaper and his nightshirt, fingers clumsy, rushed.  
  
He gets them both to the mattress, the soft _whump_ chased by slow footsteps on the stairs. Hannibal bundles Will close, pulls the blanket over their heads, finger pressed to his lips.  Will nods, quiet giggles warming the air between them.  Hannibal presses his head into the shared pillow, deliberately mussing his hair, and falls absolutely still, pulse heavy, loud in his ears.  
  
The door opens with a rough click. Silence. 

“Hannibal?”  
  
He takes a single breath, then moves slowly, turns his head beneath the blanket.  He exposes his fingers first, pulling the blanket down to fall to his waist, sitting up slowly, blinking.  He looks down, sees Will silent, rapt, trying to understand the game, then looks to Gabija in the doorway.  Rubs an eye with his knuckles.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I didn’t think you went back to bed,” Gabija says, voice bright, but slow.  
  
Hannibal doesn’t answer.  Positive that’s what will appear normal.  
  
“You didn’t go to the river?” she asks.  
  
The boy fights the impulse to swallow, tightens his jaw instead, thoughts twitching and darting.  Decides to duck his head.  “No,” he forces a small frown, looks up.  “I thought better of it.”  
  
Gabija’s eyes narrow marginally, her hand falling from the doorknob.  “You changed your mind?”  
  
Explanations leap into his mouth, lies spinning effortlessly between his teeth, poised for release.  He holds them back, withholds as he does when he has nothing to hide.  
  
“Yes.  Will you excuse us from lunch today please, Gabija?”  
  
Hannibal watches the suspicion fall from her eyes, replaced by a soft glow.  Concern.  The request was the right kind of unusual.  
  
“Of course, Hannibal.  I’ll bring it up, it’s tuna sandwiches.”  She smiles at Will, who’s attention whipped at the mention of fish.  “Have you been drinking?  You've had enough water?”  
  
“I’ve had enough water today, yes,” he answers, private amusement barely kept from the syllables.  
  
“Alright.  Would you like me to look after Will this afternoon?”  
  
“No,” Hannibal says, voice only just too sharp.  “Thank you, Gabija, he isn’t disturbing me.”  
  
She sighs, flattens her apron.  Looks at him.  “He’s safe here, Hannibal.  You both are.”  Her eyebrows dance closer.  “You know that, don’t you?”  
  
Hannibal meets her gaze, follows the way sadness darkens the brown of her eyes.  He thinks of Saulius face down in the river, of stones painted red, of the pull of water at matted hair.  
  
“I know.”  
  
“Good,” she nods once, gives him that broken smile he hates.  “I’ll bring up your sandwiches.  Get more sleep, child.”  
  
“Thank you,” Hannibal says, settling back against the mattress.  He pulls the blanket back over his head, wraps his hands loosely in Will’s shirt.  Will scoots closer, small fingers plucking at the collar of Hannibal’s pajamas, playing with the buttons.  
  
The door shuts behind Gabija.  Hannibal counts twelve footsteps on the stairs, and frees a laugh, wild, muffled into the pillow, sharp smile pressed into the cotton.  Victory, warm like worn silk, spills from his chest, tangles in his innards, chases the lingering chill from Hannibal’s fingers.  Addicting like sugar.  He presses a firm kiss to Will’s forehead, eyes closed, breathing in the musk of river water, the clinging tang of ocean mist.  
  
“Bee?” Will asks, hands on Hannibal’s chin.  
  
“ _Oui, bien_ ,” Hannibal whispers.  “ _Jusqu'ici ça va_.”  
  
Hannibal pulls the blanket closer, blood slowing in the calm trickling from rib to rib.  He savors the warmth collecting beneath the knit, gathering in the space that connects the two boys.  
  
He's asleep before Gabija returns, Will’s hands gentle against his face.  
  
***  
  
Hannibal wakes with a shuddering gasp, finds the light low, the space beside him empty and cool.  He shocks upright, tangled in the blanket.  
  
“Will?” his voice clicks in his throat, eyes wild, unfocused.  
  
“Ni?”  
  
Hannibal zeros in on the small voice, finds Will laid out on his stomach by the window, hands on the newspaper fish Hannibal made for him.  The koi is slightly flattened, ink smeared into motion.  Will brightens to see Hannibal awake, his cheeks dalmatian with black smudges.    
  
Hannibal is up, feet rapid on the wood, scooping Will into a tight embrace before he can react.  Will gives a dark protest, but wraps his arms around Hannibal’s neck.  
  
The grumbling turns to sounds of soft inquiry as Hannibal’s tears wet the scratchy collar of Will’s pajamas.  Hannibal squeezes his eyes tight against the images of Will’s laughter bubbling into blood, his chest a bouquet of arrows, the dreams transformed from memories to radiant horrors.  
  
“I thought it would stop,” Hannibal says, temple pressed to Will’s hair, the brightness of the afternoon faded to dust. “Will.  Why won’t it stop?  We’re safe now.”  His hands cross over Will’s back, tangle in his shirt, fisting the fabric into knots.  
  
The sweep of abused paper against his chin drags his eyes open.  Narrowed, damp with pain, his eyes find the window.  It drips with sunset hues, the evening illuminating in half-shadows the sill.  The antler tine still rested upon it.  
  
Hannibal breathes out slowly, despair flaking away like a shed skin.  He wipes at his face.  
  
“I see,” he whispers, eyes catching and reflecting the red of the setting sun.  He sets Will down, hand brushing absently through his dark hair on the way to the window.  
  
His fingers hesitate for a single moment, hover in place, then drop to the antler.  It’s cold in his grip, dust caught in the grooves.  Hand tightening around it, he presses the point to his palm.  
  
It’s sharp.  Not sharp enough.  
  
Will comes over, braces a hand on Hannibal’s thigh, reaching for the antler.  Interested in what’s caught Hannibal’s attention.  
  
“ _Le bois de cerf_ ,” Hannibal says, knowing Will’s seen it before, showing him anyway.  He watches Will inspect it, tactile as always. “ _Sera-ce pas poétique_?”  
  
He places it back on the window sill.  
  
Will smiles.  He shows Hannibal his fish in turn, says something like the first syllable of the word in French.  
  
“It’s more lovely than before,” Hannibal observes, genuinely pleased by it’s weathered appearance.  He picks Will up, arms straining slightly, wanting the proximity anyway.  “Let’s take it downstairs and show Gabija.  You need to eat.”  
  
He turns to kick the blanket back onto the mattress, notices the tuna sandwiches for the first time.  The bread has been torn apart, tuna smeared around the plate and onto the floor.  
  
“Did you eat any of the sandwiches, _mielas_?  Or just destroy them?”  
  
Will follows his gaze and laughs, mouth wide, pleased with himself.  "Yes!"  He pats Hannibal’s cheeks with both hands, a patronizing comfort.  Hannibal closes an eye against the slap of paper, one tiny palm still gripping the origami.  
  
Hannibal sighs, leaves the cleanup for later.  He hoists Will onto his shoulders.  Will instantly grips his head for balance, taking handfuls of Hannibal’s hair.  Hannibal anchors the child by the ankles, plaid pajamas cool under his palms.  
  
When they reach the kitchen, the other children are already eating dinner.  They look up as the two enter, eyes quickly dropping back to their meals.  Tomos pulls his bowl a little closer.  The seat next to him is empty.  
  
Hannibal keeps his expression blank, coolly pleasant against the sting of renewed excitement.  He returns Will to the floor.  The little boy hurries to their usual chair, climbing onto and looking to Hannibal, both hands on the table.  
  
Gabija stands at the sink, eyes on the dark window.  She hadn’t set out a plate for them, no doubt expecting them to sleep through the meal.  
  
Hannibal wordlessly goes to the cupboards for a bowl, helps himself to the lentil stew on the stove.  At the scrape of the pot, Gaibja startles slightly.  Hannibal raises his head to meet her eyes, watches her expression travel from surprised, to disappointed, to something fragile.  
  
“Hannibal, I didn’t think you’d be up.  You look a little better, child, that’s good.”  
  
“I am.  Thank you for the sandwiches this afternoon.  Will enjoyed them.”  
  
“Of course,” she says, missing the joke.  Her eyes jump back to the window.  She sighs, hands curled on the counter top.  
  
Hannibal ladles the stew slowly, planning the modulation of his words carefully, swallowing against his heartbeat in his throat.  “Is something wrong?”  
  
She glances at him, looks back to the night outside. “Oh, it’s just.  Saulius.  I haven’t seen him all day.  He’s not in his room.  Tomos was with him early this morning, and then he just disappeared.”  
  
Hannibal can’t think how to respond.  Can’t untangle what someone would say, what he would say, what he should say.  “Oh,” he settles on, finds his tone laced with something hard, gentled at the edges.  
  
Gabija gives him a weak smile.  “I know you two… don’t get along,” she says.  Hannibal thinks that’s perhaps put it too mildly.  “You don’t need to try to seem worried for my sake.  Go eat your dinner.”  
  
Hannibal does.  He ignores the looks from Tomos and Ausrine, focuses on feeding himself and Will.  The stew tastes like chalk in his mouth, nerves and something metallic filling his stomach and tightening his tongue.  
  
Will fusses and grumbles, pushing away the spoon, good mood poisoned by the quiet tension in the kitchen.  Hannibal wants to leave.  To get on with his plan.  Impatience licks up his spine, tightens his grip on the spoon.  He forces himself to eat, and to eat slowly.  
  
What feels like hours later, it’s only Gabija left with them in the kitchen.  The woman has taken a seat at the end of the table, absently knitting something in red.  Will’s face is pressed to Hannibal’s chest in a backwards form of defiance.  
  
Hannibal pushes lentils around the bottom of the bowl, watching Gabija from his periphery.  She looks to the door every few moments, otherwise immersed in her work, unfocused.  Hannibal may as well not be in the room.  
  
Pushing the chair out, Will wrapped around him like a sloth, Hannibal takes their bowl to the sink.  Bangs around more than necessary, runs the water.  Lets the spoon drop in the basin with a clatter.  He looks at Gabija.  She hasn’t picked up her head, hasn’t paid him any attention.  
  
The boy moves quietly to the right.  He slides open a drawer one-handed, eyes on Gabija, and takes hold of a boning knife.  The metal sings quietly against the other cutlery as he pulls it out.  
  
Will turns his face to see why he’s being jostled, catches the glint of steel as Hannibal hides the knife behind his back.  He tucks it into the waistband of his pajama pants, elastic pressing the handle to his skin.  
  
Breathing controlled, deep and slow, Hannibal heads for the hallway.  “Goodnight, Gabija,” he says, “Thank you for dinner.”  
  
Gabija nods in his direction, waves the knitting at him.  
  
Emboldened by the press of the knife at his back, he adds, “I’m sure Saulius will turn up.” 

He knows how Saulius will look when he does.  Skin blue and waxy, faintly bloated and stiff with cold and decay.  Hannibal doesn’t have to force a smile.  
  
Gabija returns the smile, a better version than before dinner, and looks at him with something he hasn’t seen before.  “Thank you, Hannibal,” she pauses, rubs her eyes, “You and Will… I’m glad.  You’re better these days.”  
  
The boy’s smile goes brittle.  _Better_ , as if he had been broken before, but not in the ways that he knows he was.  _Better_ , like a few words and manufactured expressions will help him sleep at night.    
  
He turns before she notices the difference.  “Good night,” he repeats, and takes Will upstairs.  
  
Closing the door to their room softly behind him, Hannibal sets Will down again, prying him from his shirt.  He carefully withdraws the knife from his waistband, watches the early moonlight dance over the blade.  
  
“It has to be tonight,” Hannibal says, voice quiet but solid.  He stands still for a moment more, eyes tracing the knife from handle to edge, back again.  His grip tightens.  He goes to the window, sits on the sill.  Takes up the antler.  
  
Will moves to sit on his lap, but Hannibal holds him at bay with a single raised hand.  “No, Will, these are sharp.  Sit on the mattress with Do.  I’ll tell you a story.”  
  
Will’s eyebrows knit together.  He puffs out his cheeks, hums.  Does as he’s told.  
  
Once Will is settled, Hannibal presses the knife to the antler point, angled in and up.  The bone resists, the knife skidding, ineffective.  Hannibal adjust his grip, presses harder.  A thin shaving falls to the floor.  Just like sharpening a pencil.    
  
Success crawls its way into Hannibal’s stomach, barbs sharp.  He repeats the motion, clears his throat.  
  
“Once there was a young price who lived in an enormous castle by the sea.  He owned a thousand horses, a hundred hounds, and commanded an army so great that the earth shook when they marched.  But the prince had a secret…”  
  
Hannibal glances up at Will.  He’s smiling, squeezing Do to his chest, hands absently stroking the doll.  Satisfied that Will is entertained, Hannibal continues, weaving the words, slicing bone in his hands.  
  
He lets the story unfold, paying little mind to the sound of his own voice, more focused on the position of the moon as the minutes tick by.  It finally slides into view over the tree line, winds the story to a natural close.  
  
“…and so the prince discovered that by sharing his secret with his Destined One, the curse was broken.  Restored to his true form, the two lived happily ever after.”  
  
Hannibal looks up from his work, face blank.  Will is asleep, curls askew, his hands in loose fists above his head.  Hannibal gains expression, soft affection narrowing his eyes.  
  
He wets his lips, looks back to the antler.  Sharpened to a needle at its narrowest, Hannibal tests the point on an index finger.  A bead of blood blossoms forth, skin parting under the slight pressure.  
  
Satisfied, he sets the antler and knife down.  He goes to drape the blanket over Will, tucking in the edges around him, sliding the pacifier between his teeth.  Will murmurs around it, doesn’t wake.  Hannibal runs a hand through Will’s hair, straightening a few of the curls, and pulls away.  
  
The buzz of adrenaline tickles at his fingertips, the back of his neck.  He takes a moment to pull the wet clothes from under the mattress corner, remembers to drape them over the chair to dry.  Then he slips from the room.  
  
The house is dark, most of the other children asleep.  On the second floor, light leaks from under the door to Marna and Anya’s room, faint conversation carried with it.   Hannibal rounds the corner, skirts the warm glow from the kitchen that whispers up the stairs.  Gabija is likely still knitting.  Waiting for Saulius.  
  
Hannibal smirks at the thought.  He opens the closet door quietly, wary of the rustle of fabric as he pushes aside sweaters and coats.  He finally finds it.  Heavy, dark blue, and recently without an owner.  
  
He pulls the jacket out, tucks it under an arm.  Next selects a scarf, one of the girl’s, in a turquoise almost alight in the darkness.  
  
He ghosts back up the stairs.  Will hasn’t moved.  He drops the jacket to the floor, winds the scarf around his neck.  Unfolds his other pair of jeans and pulls them on over his pajama bottoms, the material bunching beneath the denim, warmth building quickly.  
  
Hands shaking slightly, fear or anticipation crawling with too many tiny legs up his throat, Hannibal laces on his boots.  Finally zips on the jacket.  He presses the antler into his left pocket, slides the knife into an inner pocket against his chest.  Just in case.  
  
The window latch sticks.  Hannibal leans on it, the lever finally jolting loose, pressure on the window frame releasing with a loud crack.  The boy freezes, listens.    
  
Will sleeps undisturbed.  No sounds from below.    
  
Breathing again, Hannibal turns the crank on the window, night air rushing into the attic by inches.  He frowns, glances back at Will.  Pulls the window closed again.  
  
He strips off his boots, rushes downstairs again.  Impatient, less mindful of the noise he makes, he selects a soft coat from the closet.  It catches on the hanger in his haste, rebounds before he can wrestle it off and out.  
  
Teeth set together, he takes the attic stairs two at a time.  Shuts the door with a quiet click, and moves the chair into place beneath the handle.  
  
Hannibal drapes the large coat over Will under the blanket, his impatience smoothing out.   He sits on the cold wood floor, puts on his boots again, takes quiet steps back to the window.  
  
With it opened just enough, Hannibal steps up to crouch on the narrow sill.  He glances back at Will.  Memorizes the dark halo of curls around his head, the moon pale of his skin.  Breathes in the comfort of their combined scent in the room.  
  
" _Dormez bien, ma chère.  Je reviendrai._ ”  
  
He wedges himself through the window, and into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many of you have commented that you love how Hannibal and Will are cute and creepy. I tried to really deliver that juxtaposition in this one.
> 
> This fic grips me by the throat and tells me what to write, so I'm officially done assuming I know how long it will take me to get from planned scene to planned scene lol. I was going to jump right into the fray in this chapter but as I worked on it, it seemed to call for the time for reaction and transition. I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> I tend to always share random goodies in these notes. So here's a link to my [Hannigram playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlag9_7kTTUx1zhMI6Dxml9Ww7FqhpbAT)! I adore you all, your comments give me life, and several of them have inspired plans for future chapters. Thank you <3


	9. Shatter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Supremely unbeta'd. I'll clean it up tomorrow, but a promise is a promise.
> 
> Premeditation is a whole other animal, isn't it? Especially when you're eleven. Enjoy!

Silence hangs above the city streets, noise and activity faded with the sun. The occasional car passes with the hum of an engine, stray pedestrians weaving home from clubs and bars. Hannibal avoids them, sticks close to the edge of the sidewalk.

A dog barks in the distance. He thinks of Will, the crush and burn of anxiety coloring the image.

He pulls his arms tighter against his chest, crossed, hands in his armpits. He knows the Inn, remembers it from his first trip to town with Gabija. One block from the grocery, unmistakable, old wood and glass set against the Soviet architecture built around it. Red awnings bleached orange in the sun.

The trouble is finding it in the dark.

His impulsiveness, the foolishness of it, bites at Hannibal’s heels with every step. He takes a turn, won’t admit it’s random, forces his breathing to slow.

A truck rumbles past, headlights cutting tracks through the night. Hannibal stops. He watches it go by, sees himself, Will, in the passenger seat, caught in the watercolor of loss and memory. The inevitability that had flavored the moment returns, soaks his lungs on the inhale, whispers cool and quiet through his blood.

When he turns from the road, Mischa stands before him, smiling.

Hannibal smiles back, crooked, the expression slicing open the center of his heart. She cocks her head to the right and watches him.

He looks back, feels like he’s bleeding out at the sight of her, exactly as she was, spun anew from his memories, independent of them as she had never been before.

“You forgot the way, right?” she asks, laughter in her voice, in his head.

“Yes,” he says, lips barely moving.

“Of course.” She rolls her eyes, softens it with another smile. “I’ll show you, Han.”

She starts walking, looks back to make sure Hannibal is following. As if he could do anything else.

He falls into step beside her, his feet tapping alone on the pavement. Her hair lifts in golden tendrils in the slight breeze, brushing her face, her freckled nose. Every detail attended to, even the tear in the seam of her jacket hem, caught while scaling a fence, weeks before she died.

“Stop staring, Han,” she chides, sticking out her tongue.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not. You should be paying attention, you have to find your way home.”

“That’s not my home, Mischa,” Hannibal says, looking away, eyes to the pavement, to the sky.

“Ok,” she agrees, flippant, “Back to Will, then.”

Hannibal says nothing, the gaping wound of his heart leaking into his chest.

Mischa looks at him, steps forward to cut him off, walk backwards in front of him. “You are going back, aren’t you?”

“Mischa,” Hannibal starts, stops, swallowing.

“You told him you’d be back, Hannibal.” Her voice has gone sharp, like it was when he’d hit the neighbor’s boy for spitting. “You promised Will you’d come back.”

“What if I can’t?” Hannibal asks, voice high in his throat.

“‘Course you can,” she says, tone still hard, “You can hunt anything, Han.”

Tears form instantly at the words, streaking down his face. He brushes them away, fabric of the jacket rough on his chilled skin. He follows her in and out of the pools of light falling from street lamps.

“I couldn’t protect you, Mischa. What if I can’t protect him?”

“You can, Han. It wasn’t your fault.”

“It was.”

“It wasn’t! It wasn’t your fault,” she repeats, sullen, bottom lip out. “Will needs you. So do this, if you have to, and then you’ll go home to him. Back to him,” she corrects. She’s stopped walking.

She reaches for him, takes his hand, her skin the same temperature as the air. Hannibal meets her gaze. The rich brown of her eyes is dark with purpose, unnaturally bright in the darkness.

“I was just a time of day, Han,” Mischa says, gentle again.

Hannibal’s throat tightens. He grips his jacket tighter, nails digging into the course fabric. “That doesn’t sound like something you would say.”

“It’s something _you’d_ say. I’m saying it for you.” She smiles, fond, the only one like it he’d ever seen for him. “You got to let me go, Han.”

In the next blink, he’s alone.

Hannibal breathes, hands finding his pockets, grounding himself with the weight of steel and bone. The inn stands directly across the street. Light spills onto the pavement from the lobby, windows alight on the first floor. A handful of rooms on upper floors glow with activity, much of the hotel asleep.

The boy steps into the street, shoulders hunched, pace fast. He ignores the mahogany entry and slips into the alley, hoping for a door. He steps quickly, eyes adjusting to the deeper dark. Two rats emerge from under a dumpster set against the neighboring building, scurrying away, racing further into the alley.

Hannibal’s eyes track their progress, lifting to a metal door ten meters in. The aluminum is scratched and dented, secured by a rusty chain and padlock.

A chuck of cinderblock sits by the dumpster. Hannibal picks it up, remembers the scratch of stone against his palm, and strikes the chain. It bounces, clanging, dust from the cinderblock separating in a plume.

Pausing, Hannibal counts heartbeats, almost painful against his ribs. Waits for a sound from within, any indication he’d been heard.

Nothing. A small smile angles his lips.

He strikes again, face blanking, chain swinging. Then again. The blow glances off, hitting the door with a hollow thump, his knuckles scraping the metal, leaving an uneven smear of blood. Hannibal wipes at it with his sleeve.

He tightens his grip and hits the chain again, frustration behind it. The links hold fast, but the joint affixing it to the door rends, frozen rust splitting down the center. The chain sways in a slack loop from the wall, lock keeping time in a pendulum swing.

Hannibal steps to the side, leaning against the wall beside the hinges, chin raised to the night sky. Counts to twenty in Lithuanian, silent, then counts again in French. Once more in English, making it to eleven before he forgets the words. He moves for the handle.

The door is heavy, stiff in the cold frame, metal handle painful against his bare skin. Hannibal braces his feet on the alley pavement and pulls it open.

Inside, the dim light reflects high-contrast on stainless steel. Counter tops, appliances, dozens of pots and pans hung from the ceiling like an execution. The kitchen feels like its holding its breath for the morning.

Hannibal spins in place twice, eyes bright. The air stings with the taste of pepper, rich chicken stock, the tang of baked apple pie. He licks his upper lip, takes a slow breath, and moves towards the kitchen doors, fingertips running blindly along the edge of the counter top.

Palm pressed to a door, Hannibal stills. He takes off the jacket, relocates the knife and antler to his jeans. The knife is awkward in his pocket, cold through the fabric, handle visible above the seam. The needle point of the antler slices through the pocket lining instantly, blood tacking denim to skin beneath his hip. Hannibal ignores it.

He hides the jacket in the gap beneath the steel countertop, removing the knife to kneel, and does the same with his shoes. Returning to the door, Hannibal opens it a crack, light momentarily blinding as it breaks into the kitchen.

Squinting, Hannibal takes in the slice of the lobby. Visible around the end of the hallway, a few people are seated in worn leather chairs around the fireplace, pressing glasses and bottles to their lips around laughter. He pushes the door open further, taking a half step into the hallway, looking to the left.

The concierge booth, made of long, polished log beams, comes into view. A young man stands in profile behind the counter, eyes glazed and on a folded newspaper, jaw resting on his knuckles. Tables decorated with winter flowers, perhaps fake, multiplied in mirrors, adorn the room at every wall.

Hannibal lets the door fall closed, ducks back into the kitchen. He takes hold of a glass salt shaker, emptying the contents into the sink, discarding the metal lid in a trash bin.

He slips from the kitchen, silent, numb, awake. He moves slow, stops at the end of the hallway. He steps from the wall.

Breathes in, out, once, and throws the salt shaker.

It pelts across the lobby, catching the edge of a glass vase, knocking it over, smashing into a mirror. Glass sprays from the wall, the table, crashing and glittering to the floor. A woman shrieks, bottles knocked over in surprise, every head turning as one to the wreckage.

Hannibal presses to the wall, steps further back down the hallway, eyes narrowed, tracking the concierge. The man rushes from behind the counter, eyes wide, honed on the sudden damage. He passes the hallway, doesn’t see Hannibal.

Guests already laughing nervously, Hannibal moves quickly. He strides from the hallway, drops his head, steps behind the concierge booth, scanning for the guestbook.

He immediately flips back several pages, looking first for Russian names, glancing to the check-in dates, number of guests. Rooms 328 and 653 both fit. Hannibal glances behind him at the rack of keys, knows 653 is too high for him to reach.

“Alright, who did it? Somebody threw something. Whoever did this is out, out right now!”

Hannibal puts the guestbook down, angles it exactly as it had been, crosses the narrow space, reaches for the manager’s key hanging from 328’s peg.

“There’s only glass! Nobody threw nothing.”

“You might have thrown your damn martini glass! Vases don’t spontaneously explode.”

“As if we’d waste the booze,” comes the answer, “Place must be haunted!” Laughter follows, the rest of the group joining in.

Peeking over the booth to check, Hannibal finds the concierge staring down a guest who’s smiling, nodding at the glittering tiles.

Hannibal shoves the thick key next to the antler and steps quickly from behind the counter. Head low, he moves for the wide staircase, hardly breathing, skirting the occupants of the lobby.

His foot finds the first step, and he takes a breath, finds it caught in his throat.

“Hey— kid! Kid!” Hannibal stops. “You know something about this?”

Hannibal swallows, heart slamming against his ribs. He leans into the foot resting on the next step, lets the knife bite into his flesh, lets himself feel it. Tears prick into his eyes. He bites his lip and turns slowly.

“No,” Hannibal answers, eyes low. He can hear the concierge coming closer, the burn of cheap cologne preceding him. Won’t let himself look until the man is two feet away and looming.

“You trying to tell me you didn’t break that vase?” His voice is hard, not really a question. Hannibal raise his head, some corner of himself amused by the way the man’s eyes soften. “What are you doing down here at this hour? Where’s your parents?”

“I didn’t do it,” Hannibal squeezes his eyes shut, encourages twin tears to escape. He can hear Lika’s voice in his head, mimics the tone she’d used over a torn dress. “Dad’s yelling again, so I came down here, and you’re all yelling too. Why is everyone always yelling?”

The man’s face tightens, mouth slackening. He licks his lips. Hannibal takes the pause to draw a shuddering breath, to pull his sweater down to cover the knife handle.

“Hey, hey, no, it’s ok,” the concierge says, “You’re ok, I’m sorry, you know, nobody’s yelling down here. I was just surprised. You’re not, you’re not in trouble.”

Hannibal sniffs, runs an arm under his nose, keeps the other hand tight in the sweater over his pocket.

“I- I just want to go back to my room now.” Hannibal lets his lower lip slip out, worries he’s overplaying it, and pulls in between his teeth instead.

“Of course. Yeah. You just, you call down to the front desk if your dad gets angry again, alright?”

Hannibal nods, keeps his eyes low, knowing he can’t fake the nuanced emotion, not with the knife digging into his thigh, the brass key heavy in his pocket. Not with Will sleeping miles away, alone.

He turns quickly, taking the stairs at an even pace, narrowly avoiding a limp around the pressure of the knife. Cresting the stairs, he hurries around the corner, backs against the wall and breathes, eyes shut tight. His palms press cold sweat into the wallpaper.

Chin dropping, Hannibal exhales, centered, eyes empty. He pulls his hands from the wall, slow, fingertips lingering. Takes the knife from his pocket, stashes it up his left sleeve instead, the flat of it hot against his skin, elastic around his wrist holding it in place.

Hannibal dips back around the corner, moving faster now, takes another flight of stairs to the third floor.

The lamps in the hallway are dimmed for the night, warm on the numbered placards for the doors. They begin at 310. Hannibal starts walking, eyes flicking from placard to placard, steps slow, extended.

316, 318, 320, the numbers crashing in Hannibal’s mind like stones struck together, stomach pressing heavy against the underside of his jaw. 320, and his tongue feels too thick, 322, the knife slips against his skin, growing damp, 324, his hands shake, each inhale pinned to his throat.

326\. 328. Hannibal turns to face the door, thoughts like a sewing machine, hum uneven, sharp, too rapid to follow. He creeps to the door, foot see-sawing to reel him closer, eyes wide, breath short.

There is no light beneath the door, no sounds from within. The boy swallows. Dips his hand into his pocket, withdrawing the key.

His hand shakes, scratching the key gently against the lock, leaving lightning marks before the key slots in.

It might not be the right room. These might not be the right Russians. But Hannibal knows, knows as the lock turns with a thunk that rebounds off his ribs.  This is the right room.

He edges the door open, a gentle creak swaying with it. He hurries through, eager to blot out the band of light from the hallway. Shuts the door with a soft click, and lets his eyes adjust to the darkness.

The room is small, with a desk, couch, bathroom to the left. Twin beds, occupied. The sapor of liquor and wood, the calcium taste of bone, clings to the air. The drapes are half open, moonlight pouring through the glass of a narrow balcony door.

Hannibal lifts a foot, socked toes knocking into an empty bottle, sending it into a gentle half spiral. He stills, looking to the beds. No movement. He continues, navigating around a half dozen discarded liquor bottles.

He recognizes a scotch label in the dark. His father’s favorite. The thought pings clear through the fizzle and drone, slides warm down his throat like a stolen sip of the same.

Reaching the narrow isle between the beds, Hannibal stands still, regarding the lamp, the mechanical clock on the side table. The minute jumps from four to five before Hannibal moves again. His head jerks to the left, eyes following a second later, and he looks at the man lying on the bed.

“ _Я думал, что она олень_ ,” the man says, voice fracturing clear from Hannibal’s memory. The boy tosses his head, neck stiff against the movement, chokes down air. The moonlight on the man’s face looks like the echo white of snow, the room suddenly too cold, magnifying the tremor from elbow to fingers. “ _Она посмотрела, как олень_.”

Hannibal’s hands close into fists. He takes an involuntary half step back, head whipping to consider the second bed, the other man strewn, fully clothed, over the covers.

“ _Жаль, что мы не можем съесть ее_ ,” the hunter says, his face a sleeping nightmare, familiar like an infected wound.

Hannibal stares, eyes tracing every feature, watching the man’s back rise and fall slowly, jaw slack against the pillow. He can hear the man’s careless laughter, brittle between his ears, “ _Отходы стрелкой._ ”

He looks up to see Mischa standing on the other side of the bed, sees her looking down at the arrow shaft protruding from her sternum. Her eyes find Hannibal’s as blood swells from the wound to dye her coat in a warm rush, fury pouring into Hannibal, swallowing his breath, his heartbeat.

The seam of his pocket catches on his knuckles, denim scratching dry skin. He pulls the antler free, turning the weapon in his palm, acutely aware of every ridge and bump, the minute pores, the jagged angle where it broke from the rest.

His grip tightens, and he steps close, hips pressing to the edge of the mattress, comforter between warm and plush. Head dipping just to the right, Hannibal considers the stubble decorating the man’s exposed throat. A small scar interrupts the pattern of hair beneath the taut ligament.

Hannibal raises the antler above his shoulder, point down, pauses. He breathes out and strikes, weight falling with it, bending him at the waist, elbow striking the bed, antler opening the man’s scar, staining his skin black in the moonlight.

The man is instantly awake, drawing a shuddering gasp, air escaping the hole in his windpipe. He yanks into a fetal position, hands flying up to clutch at this neck. Blood escapes between his fingers, his eyes wide, panicked, confused, finding Hannibal in the dark.

Hannibal watches the man gurgle and thrash, frozen with fascination. He doesn’t hear the creak of the mattress behind him, the rustle of blankets disturbed.

“Какого черта?”

The voice is rough with sleep, confused, the product of the moment, not memory. Hannibal whips around to find the man awake, sitting up in bed, wide eyes on the other, sclera lit by the moon.

The man’s stare jumps from his twitching partner to Hannibal, to the antler in his hand, incomprehension morphing to rage.

“Мой Бог, что ты сделал?” the man shouts. “что, черт возьми ты сделал?”

Hannibal backs up, darts to the left, makes for the door. He’s caught by the collar, brought to within centimeters of the man’s face, huge fist threatening the thin fabric of Hannibal’s sweater as the boy is suspended.

“Ты убил его!” The sour warmth of stale alcohol washes against Hannibal’s face at the words, “Ты убил его, вы маленький дьявол, я убью тебя!”

Hannibal blacks out for a heartbeat, finds himself hanging limp in the man’s grip, the right side of his face a blaze of pain, bones feeling like they don’t belong beneath his skin. Eye refusing to open, Hannibal struggles to think, thoughts like liquid mercury, escaping like helium.

The antler clings precariously in the curl of his fingers, stuck to his damp skin. Hannibal squeezes it, strikes up blindly, catches the man in the upper arm. He cries out, drops Hannibal, who collapses, scuttles back and away, antler scuffing along the floor in his fist.

The man is on him again almost instantly, snarling, picking the boy up by the neck, the antler falling from Hannibal’s grip, clattering to the floor.

Hannibal sails back, thrown like a doll towards the balcony door. He hears a shatter and realizes he’s looking up at the night sky, half outside, thrown clean through the glass. Shards crush against concrete as Hannibal tries to move, finds his limbs slow to respond. He’s dragged back inside by the ankle, stars slipping from view.

The man crouches over Hannibal, wraps his hands around the boy’s narrow throat, pupils blown with ire, drunk, unfocused. Hannibal scrabbles at the grip on his neck, can’t breath, can’t focus on anything but the hands that killed Mischa, that will kill him too. That will, that will. Will.

Hannibal stops fighting the strangle hold, gets both arms under the man’s chest. The blade of the knife stings against his thumb as he pulls it free from his sleeve. Vision slipping to greyscale, Hannibal turns his wrist and slams the knife into the man’s chest, beneath the sternum, angled up, in.

Thick and hot, blood streams down the handle of the knife, over the back of Hannibal’s hand, down his wrist, into his sleeve. Hannibal drives the blade deeper, room utterly dark, moonlight no longer reaching him.

The grip around his neck twitches and goes slack, the man collapsing, most of his weight falling on Hannibal. Releasing his grip on the knife, Hannibal thrashes back to free himself, breath rattling, gasping, narrow and shallow.

Hannibal curls onto his side, coughing, hands slippery with blood. The room slowly spots back into view. Both men lie still, the arm of the first visible from the floor, draped over the edge of the bed. The second forms the centerpiece in a swelling wreath of blood. It gathers and spreads, racing dark lines into the floorboards, dripping between the gaps in the wood.

Glass, caught in the fibers of his sweater, crinkles and chimes as Hannibal sits up. He rubs his hands down his chest, leaves ten trails of blood on the fabric. His palms are stained to match, red caught in the creases of his handprints, part of him.

He stands slowly, one knee buckling, catches himself. Swaying, he looks back to the floor. Turns slowly in place. Specks of blood and glass shards decorate a five foot radius, like his mother’s jewelry box spilled to the floor, rubies and diamonds.

All of it, beautiful.

Laughter, light and uneven, boils in the pit of his stomach. Two men, over twice his size, shattered like the balcony door, transformed into a painting at his feet. He memorizes every inch, tucks it away to keep, for himself and for Will.

The phone on the nightstand rings.

Hannibal’s head rises, processing the sound. What it means pieces together slowly, the racket the struggle had created trickling into place, blurry at the edges.

He limps quickly back around the bed and shakes a pillow loose from its case, wrapping it around his hand as an awkward glove. He pulls open the drawer. Two pens rattle inside, bump against a bible. Hannibal removes the drawer entirely, upends it on the floor, then places it on it’s side, angled against the bed.

He searches the man on the bed, left eye on the stained dark comforter. Taking his wallet, Hannibal stuffs it into his own pocket. Pulls the rings from his sticky hands and pockets those too.

The lamp is next, dropped to the floor with a hollow clunk. He moves to the man on the floor, socks crunching over the shards. A wad of rubles is tucked into the man’s breast pocket, quickly transferred to Hannibal’s jeans. A carton of cigarettes is ignored, the box of matches instead set between Hannibal’s teeth. He looks around, knocks a duffle bag on its side, rips clothes out of it haphazard to strew across the room.

He sees the crossbow last. Hannibal places a foot on an arm and snaps it in two.

He puts on the coat draped over the chair, covering his ruined sweater, the blood soaking his torso, and ignores the fire against the shredded skin of his back. A bottle of vodka sits, mostly full, on the desk. Hannibal takes that too, tucking it into the coat. He scoops up the antler, the knife, head and face throbbing as he bends over, and goes to the door.

The phone rings again. Hannibal doesn’t pause, doesn’t look back, and slips into the hallway.

It’s too bright, Hannibal’s headache spiking. He wipes down the doorknob with the pillow case, tosses it back into the room. Locks the door, and hurries away.

Cheap cologne wafts up the stairs as he nears them, footsteps heavy on the way up. Hannibal changes course, ducking around the opposite corner. He waits until he hears the concierge pass, out of view, and darts back to the stairs, away from the sharp beats of urgent knocking.

His heels don’t touch the steps, feet skimming over each, adrenaline lending him balance, pulse pounding too heavy in his temples. His tightens his fingers around the neck of the vodka bottle, hand in the coat.

The lobby is empty. Bottles still sit on the table at the fireplace, the mess from Hannibal’s diversion cleaned up. He spares a glance to the gouge in the mirror. Doesn’t stop.

He passes into the kitchen, relief washing over him with the darkness. Pain sparks at the corners of his awareness. He swallows it down, stamps it out. Kneeling for his jacket and shoes, Hannibal falls to all fours briefly, seasick on land. He breathes through his nose. Focuses on the ghost scent of olive oil and coriander.

He gets the jacket over his arm, curls his shaking fingers into the heels of his shoes. He pads quietly to the door and escapes the hotel.

Once in the alley, Hannibal strips off the hunter’s coat, transferring the knife and antler to his own jacket. He tosses the coat into the empty dumpster. His breath materializes in rapid clouds, entire body instantly shuddering in the cold. Hands clumsy, he uncorks the vodka. He forces down a mouthful, coughing on the burn against his still raw throat. Then upends the rest down his back.

A single sob jumps from his lips. It feels like acid and ice, rubbed into his flesh, peppered with gravel. He peels the sweater from his skin, bottom lip pressed between his teeth, separating the skin. Glass tinkles to the pavement as he pulls free from the sticky fabric.

It goes in the dumpster next. Then his socks. He steps into his shoes, can’t do up the laces. He shrugs into the jacket, grateful he’s gone numb, that he can’t quite feel it chafing his naked back. He empties the hunter’s wallet and tosses it after his socks.

It takes four matches before the vodka hits his bloodstream, steadying his hands enough to get a light. He drops the flame into the dumpster, peers over the edge to watch the pile, soaked in alcohol, ignite.

Hannibal walks away, leaving a billow of smoke and the acrid burn of wet iron. Mischa isn’t with him. He doesn’t need her to be.

Not anymore.

He finds his way to the general store, a fevered whim, thoughts cottoned by the vodka soaking his concussion. He pulls a wad of rubles from his pocket, stuffs them under the door for Mr. Dabnys. He anchors himself against the wood for a moment, breathing slow, steady, then draws away, unbalanced, and continues down the street.

It takes him three hours to get home. The vodka doesn’t last that long.

He detours to the river where the water runs fast and deep, far from where he’d taken Will, from where Saulius rots. He drops the antler, the knife, the key, the box of matches into the water, watches them spiral and sink, rush away with the current.

He falls twice leaving the forest. The second time, the stars have moved when he finally gets to his feet.

Pink dusts the horizon as Hannibal climbs the railing on the porch. It falters under his weight but holds. He hoists himself onto the roof of the first floor, clawing at the shingles, stomach scraping the edge of the gutter. He wants to laugh, but can’t remember how.

He slips on the loose tiles, resorts to his hands and knees the rest of the way to the higher landing, climbing like an injured cat to the attic window.

He squeezes through the opening, forces the window shut behind him, not bothering with the lever. Collapses to his stomach on the floor.

“Nini!”

Hannibal’s eye, the one not swollen shut, cracks open to see Will untangling himself from his covers. He makes a beeline for Hannibal, smile bright, dragging the blanket with him. He drops to his bottom beside Hannibal’s head, small hands tangling gently in Hannibal’s hair.

“Nini, yes. Nini kay?”

“I’m ok, Will,” Hannibal croaks. He rolls onto his side to face Will, fingertips tracing the tender skin across his neck. “How will I explain this to Gabija?”

Will reaches for his hands, taking hold of them, inspecting the stains still pressed into his prints. He makes sounds of inquiry, eyes bright and mischievous.

“I missed you," Hannibal says.

“Good,” Will replies, smug.

Hannibal's answering smile physically hurts.  “I killed them, Will. For Mischa,” he whispers, gaze on their hands, “For us.”  His eyes fall closed. Unconsciousness pulls at him, drags him into the floorboards. Will scoots closer, presses his fingers to the swollen side of Hannibal’s face.

Hannibal opens his eye, looks at Will’s tight expression. He forces himself to sit up. Crawls towards the door, and uses the chair to stand up. He sheds the jacket, taking the rest of the cash from the pockets. Toes off his shoes. Pulls on his pajama bottoms, leaves his torso bare.

He stumbles down the stairs, head, back, face throbbing. Will follows.

He’s relieved to find the kitchen empty, sunrise pouring through the picture window behind the table. Hannibal opens the drawer furthest from the sink, head nodding, loose in the neck. He pulls out the tin holding the emergency cash, not as secret as Gabija believes, and puts the stolen rubles in with the rest. He puts it back carefully, blinking rapidly to focus.

He runs the sink quickly, wetting his hands, rubbing out the blood. Dries them on the dishtowel, and opens the front door a fraction.

He gestures for Will to stay put at a distance, and selects a chair from the table. He wraps his fingers around the highest rung of the back rest. Takes a deep breath, presses his eye shut tight, and flings the chair at the window.

It splinters on impact, glass suspended for a heartbeat before collapsing in a crystal waterfall. The chair clatters to the floor. Hannibal drags it away from the window, climbs over the sill and outside through the jagged remains of the window. He turns and lays carefully down in the cold, sharp grass, letting the damp chill take the sting from his back.

The sound of feet on the stairs is drowned out by Will’s laughter, surprised and delighted. Hannibal lets himself black out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, my doves. This was a long one, and work and life kept me shackled. I hope it was worth the wait.
> 
> In this footnote, I probably wanted to expound upon my headcanon that Hannibal is, at the very foundation, driven by fear and insecurity and a crippling sense of entitlement but wow am I too tired to think at this point lol. But I will say, boy, I loved drawing on some of that season 3 material and giving Hannibal a(nother) turn with it.
> 
> We're very close to breaking these two out of Lithuania. Get excited, bigger time skip and new characters a'comin! Thank you so much, as always, for your wonderful comments and kudos. ♥


	10. Panic

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What likely classifies as a promotion at work (read: I am paid the same to do more work) and visiting family and some general exhaustion is to blame for my lateness with this chapter! Please accept my humble apologizes and enjoy the fluff!
> 
> unbeta'd. small timeskip is small but still a skip!

Hannibal’s reflection looks back, blank in the low light.  His eyes, cloudy in the murky glass of the mirror, trace the scar over his cheekbone, fingers following to graze its edges.  The bruising had faded two months ago. The cut, stamped by the edge of a ring, left a permanent crescent moon.  
  
Hannibal still can’t decide if it’s an imperfection or addition.  
  
He had looked once, shirt off, head at an awkward angle, at the damage to his back.  The skin is a mosaic of pale lightning strung across his shoulders, neck to tail bone.  He hadn’t looked again.  
  
Will has gone quiet in the bathtub behind him.  Hannibal raises his eyes to find Will in the mirror, watching him.  
  
“Ni pretty,” Will says with a smile, syllables awkward on the adjective.  
  
Hannibal lets out a puff of air, amused. Hands falling to the sink, he turns and sits beside the tub again.  “Is, Will,” he corrects, “’Ni is pretty.’  But thank you, Will.”  
  
“Is, is, is,” Will chants, splashing again.  
  
Hannibal fills the plastic cup with warm water and pours it over Will’s head.  The boy giggles, curls clinging to his forehead, covering his eyes.  
  
“Maybe we should have done only one language to start,” Hannibal muses.  
  
“No,” Will denies, automatic, typical.  He presses his rubber fish to the bottom of the bathtub with one hand, trapping it under his palm, eyes intense on the toy.  
  
It had been a gift from Gabija.  The second toy he’d ever been given.  Meant to soothe him, when he wouldn’t stop screaming for a feverish and unconscious Hannibal.  
  
Regret isn’t a word that Hannibal understands, but the sticky pain in his throat takes him close.  
  
He lets the sensation slip, focuses on the Will in front of him. The corners of his lips tip up.  “You can’t drown a fish, Will.  They breathe water.”  
  
Head lifting at the words, Will looks impressed.  He pulls the fish out of water and regards it carefully.  “It bree-- bree water?”  
  
“Yes.  That’s why fish live in the water.  They can’t breathe air like us.”  
  
“Oh,” Will says, eyebrows scrunched together.  He looks back at the fish, and dips it halfway back into the water, head just above the waterline.  After a moment he starts to laugh.    
  
The high chime soon morphs into a sob, fat tears spilling over his cheeks.  He submerges the toy the rest of the way, pressing it to the bottom again, and turns to Hannibal, expression wild.  “Fish die!  If- if, if no water, Ni!  Yeah?”    
  
Hannibal watches the tears fall from Will’s damp skin, lost in the soapy bathwater, fascinated by the tempest of emotions.  He doesn’t understand, can’t understand.  It’s like watching cumulus clouds, heavy with rain, drift and combine.     
  
“You don’t want the fish to die?” Hannibal asks, rubbing a thumb over Will’s cheek, catching a tear and a stray patch of suds.  Wanting to soothe, to know.  
  
Will looks down at the fish again, fingers tightening over the toy, before catching Hannibal’s eyes again.  He shakes his head at an angle, once, stops.  He’s chewing his lip, feet waving back and forth beneath the water.  
  
Hannibal fluffs Will’s wet curls, squeezing out the ends.  “It’s ok not to know what you want, Will.  You don’t have to decide with this fish.  It doesn’t have to breathe.”  
  
“Yeah?” Will pulls the fish out of the water, holds it tight to his chest.  
  
“That’s right.  It won’t go away even if it lives in the air all the time.”  
  
“Ok,” Will says, rubbing a small fist over his eyes, smile uneven.  
  
A knock draws Hannibal’s attention, narrows his eyes.  He turns to the door.  “Yes?”  
  
It opens halfway, and Gabija appears in the gap.  Hannibal stands, carefully unhurried, takes a half-step to the left to shield Will from view.  
  
“Hannibal,” she says, pauses.  “Are you two almost done?”  She doesn’t meet his eyes.  Hasn’t, since they found Saulius, carcass saturated and splitting, last month.  
  
The fact doesn’t concern him.  She doesn’t consciously suspect him of anything.  Grief and self-blame have merely coalesced to add weight to her eyes, made it harder to lift them.  An unfortunate consequence, Hannibal notes.  But unavoidable.  
  
It had been a bright afternoon, dust motes illuminated, when Anya’s scream of discovery had reached Hannibal in the kitchen, all the way from the river.  The sound, curdling and high, had brought the murder, alive again, to splash and glitter fresh in his mind. 

“Yes.  We’ll be out shortly,” he answers, blinking slow.  
  
“Hurry along."  The words are shaped like blocks, misplaced.  "You have a visitor.”  
  
Hannibal’s idle smile, seeped from the memories, fades.  “Pardon?”  
  
“There’s a visitor for you in the kitchen, Hannibal,” Gabija says, quick, anxiety clipping into impatience.  
  
Hannibal’s heart stumbles, pulls the heat from his fingers.  He skims the night at the inn, searching the memory, concussed into pieces, for something, anything he’d missed, that the police had missed, until now.    
  
He’s certain.  He's certain, despite the gaps that hang like clouds over constellations.  He left nothing to connect him with the murders, now merely a forgotten headline, lost to the rest of the world.  Dismissed as a botched robbery. 

Just like the one Hannibal had intercepted.  Before he'd been punched, pushed through the kitchen window.  
  
Hannibal's eyes refocus.  “Who?” he asks, tasting chalk.  
  
Gabija’s hand twitches on the door knob.  She pulls her lower lip between her teeth briefly, releasing it as she looks at him, meets his eyes.  “He introduced himself as Robert Lecter.”    
  
The name clicks and bangs, trying to fit into gears too rusty to turn.  It won’t compute, then abruptly sinks into understanding, slow like a feather in mud.    
  
Hannibal's head twitches left, right hand surging open, closed again.  “We’ll be right down,” he says.  His voice scratches on slate, distant, wavering at the end as he grasps to steady it.  
  
Only nodding, Gabija steps back and closes the door with a click.  
  
Hannibal turns slowly to look back at Will.  He’s chewing on the tail of the fish, eyes wide and directed at Hannibal.  
  
“Out?”  
  
“ _Oui.  S’il vous plaît_ , Will.”    
  
Will stands, water cascading from his limbs as he stretches out his arms to be lifted, the fish still in his mouth.  Hannibal leaves him dripping in the tub to fetch his towel, purple bleached blue, and wraps Will up in it, lifting him over the edge and onto the thin mat.  
  
He towels the moisture out of Will’s curls with a rough hand, Will giggling, the sound washing against the low hum in Hannibal’s ears.  He bundles Will up again, hurrying to collect his clothes, strewn haphazard on the bathroom floor.    
  
Will had fought the process for the sheer entertainment value of Hannibal’s frustration.  
  
He gets Will, still damp, into a clean diaper, his pants, sweater, without a fuss, Will catching onto the strange urgency.  Hannibal takes his hand and leads him from the bathroom.  
  
Gabija is waiting at the top of the stairs.  His eyes click onto her then past.    
  
She stops him with a hand on his shoulder.  The boy’s gaze drops to her hand, then up to her face.  She releases him abruptly.  
  
“I’ve told the other children to stay upstairs.  Leave Will with me, Hannibal.  While you talk to him, yes?”  
  
“That’s not necessary.”  
  
“Please, Hannibal.  Just this once, do as you’re told, please.”  
  
He inhales, catches the moisture on Will’s skin, the salt on her apron.  Under that, the sting of anxiety and something new, like chrysanthemums.  He searches her face and finds soft vulnerability.  
  
Hope.  
  
“Alright,” he says, gently unfolding his fingers from Will’s.    
  
Will gives a sound of protest, reaching to take Hannibal’s hand back.  Fresh tears threaten like a storm in his blue eyes, too attuned to Hannibal’s emotions, tangled in thorns.  “No, Ni,” he swallows, “This, this bad, hold hand?”  
  
“Stay with Gabija a moment, Will, please.  I’ll be right back.”  
  
“No, Ni.  No!”  
  
Will’s distress is concrete turned in Hannibal’s stomach.  He watches Gabija scoop him up and carry him to the attic stairs, Will winding himself into a complete meltdown.  The attic door closes behind them, muffling Will’s howls. 

Hannibal walks down the stairs, knees stiff.  He feels off balance, disconnected, radio dialed between stations for static.  He isn’t sure what to think, the novelty of the fact acidic on his tongue.  
  
He steps into the kitchen, socks silent on the linoleum.  A man, tall, broad-shouldered, stands facing the new window, the dark clouds outside.  
  
The man’s suit is well-tailored, the finest fabric Hannibal has seen in three years.  His brown hair is dashed with streaks of grey, still full at the crown.  Hannibal edges around the table, eyes locked on the man, periphery awareness faded to smoke.  His hand drops to the back of a chair, palm pressing into the rough wood grain.  
  
Hannibal presses his lips together in a tight line.  His heart beats steady, unhurried, too tired of racing.  He looks for the right words, considers their ramifications. How to announce his presence to the man claiming the name Robert Lecter.    
  
The boy licks his lips.  Simplicity is often best.    
  
“Hello, Uncle.”  
  
The man starts slightly, turning his head, then his torso towards Hannibal.  His eyes, pale brown, almost yellow, scan Hannibal quickly.  “Good lord,” he breathes.  “You look just like him.  Hannibal.”  
  
The boy doesn’t answer at first, searching for traces of his father in the man before him.  The shape of his eyes might match. The shade of his hair.  Hannibal realizes he isn’t quite sure, can’t quite picture his father like he can picture everything else.  The image is featured, distended, like a corpse left too long.  It sets an itch to the base of Hannibal’s skull.    
  
“You are Robert Lecter?”  The question is a void.  
  
“I am,” Robert says, hands finding his trouser pockets.  “I’m here to take you home,” he says, the words obviously pre-prepared, irrespective of brevity.  
  
Hannibal laughs, involuntary, short, the pitch uneven.  He knows it sounds wrong by the expression on Robert’s face, gone rigid.  Hannibal can’t help it, can’t prevent the gaping smile pulling at his face.  It’s the wrong kind of amusement, he’s sick with its intensity, spilling over the edges.  
  
“Please excuse me,” Hannibal says, face turned to the side, fumbling his mask.  “I’m surprised.”  The word is like dry flour in his mouth.  
  
“Of course,” Robert says, gruff.  He looks around the kitchen, uncertainty coming off him in waves, his scent pitching into irritation.  
  
This is not a man used to feeling off balance.  
  
Hannibal catalogs the observation, releases the chair and takes a half step back.  “I apologize.  I don’t,” he forces the pause, aims for demur, “I never met my Uncle.  Do you have identification?”  
  
The man looks at him, approval and annoyance competing.  “You met me once.  When you were about two,” he says, reaching into his jacket pocket.  He pulls out a burgundy booklet, extends it towards the boy.  
  
A moment passes in which Hannibal doesn’t move. Robert’s eyes dip to the booklet and back up, and Hannibal steps forward, takes it.  
  
It’s a French passport.  Hannibal studies the national crest on the front, a punch of longing sharpening his gaze.  He presses back the cover, flipping two pages in to find the photograph.  He rotates it horizontal, reads the name printed in black ink.  
  
Robert Avery Lecter.  
  
Hannibal thinks he should feel relief.  Elation.  He has only the same static, volume turned up.  A distant wail, Will’s, cuts through the silent noise, lifting Hannibal’s head.  
  
He hands back the passport.  Robert tucks it away, smile forced into place.  He glances to the doorway, in the direction of Will’s increasingly loud distress, then eyes Hannibal.  Like he’s looking for something he can’t find.  
  
“Good enough?” he asks.  
  
Hannibal nods once.  He stares at the kitchen floor, finds himself unable to look at his uncle, knowing it’s him.  Something sharp and rigid, almost like anger, grips his lungs.  Several moments pass in silence.  Hannibal can’t see the expression Robert is making.  Doesn’t want to.    
  
Inexplicably, he wants the man to leave.  
  
“Here,” Robert says.  
  
Hannibal forces himself to look up.  The man’s hands are together, pulling the ring from his right fourth finger.  He regards the silver band a moment before passing it to Hannibal.  
  
The boy takes it, no pause this time.  The metal is warm between his fingers.  Hannibal lifts the ring to inspect it, tilting it to alter the reflection.  The wide emerald, set into the band, holds the Lecter family crest etched into the stone.  It’s been worn down slightly on the right side from constant wear, rubbing against tables, bumping doors.  
  
It’s just like the one his father had worn.  That, he remembers.  
  
Hannibal swallows, his anger melting into something even more unpleasant.  He holds the ring out on his palm, back to Robert.  
  
“Keep it,” Robert says, shaking his head, clearing his throat.  
  
Hannibal closes his hand around the ring.  Pulls it back in, and slides it over his right thumb.  He regards the silver against his skin.  
  
“I thought we’d lost you as well,”  Robert’s voice is rough.  He’s not looking at Hannibal now.  “Your sister?”  
  
“She died.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Robert says.  The words cling to the air, remain in the silence.  
  
“How did you find me?”  
  
“Your drawings.”  Robert says, amusement dusting his tone. “I came to town on business.  I left my meeting and needed a new umbrella with some urgency," he gestures at the window, "stopped in the nearest shop.” 

He eyes Hannibal.  “I was paying for the thing and found myself looking at my childhood home, rendered nearly perfect in charcoal.  I asked the shop owner who’d done it."  He breathes in.  "The answer nearly gave me a stroke.  Talked to Miya - your Aunt - and came straight here.”  
  
“I see.”  He thinks of Mr. Dabnys, gratitude slicing sharp and deep.  
  
Robert smooths his hands down his jacket front, feeling for what to say next.  He looks towards the hallway again.  His face twitches in distaste.  “You had to listen to that racket often?”  
  
“No.  Will isn’t usually kept from me.”  
  
“Who?”  Robert’s eyebrows tangle.  
  
“Will,” Hannibal repeats, tone darkening with possession.  
  
The bang of a door above has both their heads turning back towards the hallway.  Gabija’s shout falls from the attic bedroom, soon followed by rapid feet on the stairs.  
  
As if summoned, Will bursts into the kitchen in a storm of tears and dark curls.  He adheres himself to Hannibal, burying his face, puffy from his tantrum, in Hannibal’s new maroon sweater.  
  
Hannibal makes hushing sounds, bending to lift Will onto his hip.  Will throws his arms around Hannibal’s neck, jamming his nose against the underside of Hannibal’s jaw, rubbing salt streaks into his neck.  
  
Soothing a hand through Will’s hair, Hannibal looks up at Robert again.  The man’s eyes are wide, mouth open just slightly.  
  
Gabija appears in the doorway, faintly out of breath, spotting Will and looking mortified.  “I’m sorry, Count Lecter,” she breathes, words dense on her accent, “He is hard to handle.”  
  
“Apparently,” Robert agrees, still thrown, stepping back.  
  
Gabija approaches quickly, reaching to take Will from Hannibal.  Will tightens his grip, nearly squeezing the air out of Hannibal.  “No!” he shrieks, deafening the older boy.  
  
“Will, come, child, Hannibal goes home with his uncle,” Gabija says, voice placating.  
  
The words have Hannibal jerking away.  He backs into the counter top, arms tight around Will in turn.  “I don't know what you've assumed, but I’m not going anywhere without Will,” he says, words angled, cutting.  
  
“Hannibal,” Gabija whispers, eyes soft, urgent.  
  
“What’s this about?” Robert inquires, eyes jumping between the two.  
  
“The boys are very attached,” Gabija explains.  She gestures helplessly at them.  
  
“Who is the child?”  
  
“His surname is Graham.  An orphan,” Gabija says, close enough to the truth.  “A sailor’s boy.”  
  
Hannibal’s upper lip twitches back, baring his teeth for an instant.  Will’s father has no claim on him now.  
  
“Hannibal,” Robert address him, what’s almost amusement tilting his tone. “We can't take the boy.  If we’d wanted to adopt an orphan, we’d have done so ten years ago.”  
  
The blood leaves Hannibal’s face like a slipped sheet.  “I’m an orphan,” he chokes out, bites the words one by one.  
  
“Yes,” and the word sounds painful. “But you’re my nephew, and the Lecter heir.”  Robert is losing his patience.  
  
Hannibal can’t feel the air in his lungs, can’t sense his own heart beating.  He thinks of the flesh on his back, latticed into cheap lace, of blood spilled on snow, on wood flooring, smeared on a river rock.  The kitchen feels too small, the colors too bright, the fridge too loud.  He’s aware of the knife drawer, finds himself counting the steps to it.  “I won’t leave without Will.  You won’t make me.”             
  
Robert’s expression is dark.  He looks to Gabija like she’s intentionally sent the situation out of hand.  
  
“Hannibal, you can go with family, child," she says,  "Will is fine here with me, you know this.”  
  
“Will is my family,” Hannibal says, dipping between a whisper and a near shout, like the volume dial has broken clean off.  “I’ll die before I leave Will.”  
  
“Let’s not be dramatic, Hannibal,” Robert interjects.  
  
“I’m not being dramatic!  I won’t leave him,” he gets out, breath rapid, beginning to hyperventilate.  He wants to bite and cut and scratch, but it's not an option, not now, not here.  He drops to the floor, graceless under Will’s weight.  He clutches Will, who’s shaking slightly, to his chest.  Hannibal slams his eyes shut, rubs his cheek, desperate, against Will’s.  
  
He snarls when a hand touches his arm.  
  
“Don’t—,” he swallows hard, can’t clear the stone weight from his throat, “Don’t touch him.”  He presses back into the cabinets, handle pressing into the scars beneath his sweater.  “I’ll kill them,” Hannibal whispers to Will, “I’ll kill them, I’ll kill them.”  
  
He repeats the words over and over, lost, until his breathing slows, evens, and he finds Will’s hands on his shoulders.  His eyes blink open, rapid fluttering.  Looking down, Hannibal finds blue staring back, red rimmed but dry.  
  
The kitchen is empty.  
  
Voices trickle in from the garden out front.  Hannibal let’s his head fall back, skull thumping against the cabinet door.  He traces the cracks in the ceiling with his eyes, soaks in the weight of Will against his chest.  
  
So much for his mask.  He can practically see the pieces on the floor, a shattered mirage of clay dust.  
  
The contents of his stomach press against his throat, prod the corners of his jaw.  Anger and fear prickle at his skin, but he can’t find the energy to stand.  So he stays put, struggles to hear the conversation outside, one hand petting Will’s hair.  
  
“What in God’s name goes on here for him to be like that?” Robert is asking, barely kept below a shout, the French clipped at the ends.  
  
“I don’t know what happened to him!” Gabija answers.  “I’ve asked him, I’ve tried talking to him countless times, he won’t tell me anything!”  
  
“You said he’s been in your care for nearly two years!”  
  
“He arrived like this, Count Lecter! This is the improved version!  He wouldn’t even speak for the first three months, not one word past his name.  He’d only hur—  get into fights with— with the other boys.  I couldn’t do anything, I tried!”  
  
Silence.  
  
“Will is what got him talking.  He won’t, he just won’t interact with anyone else,” Gabija continues, volume dropping.  
  
Hannibal can’t hear Robert’s response, only the low rumble of speech.  
  
“The boy is damaged, Count.  Whatever happened to him— You need to treat him gently.”  
  
The conversation continues, too quiet to understand.  
  
“‘Damaged,’” Hannibal whispers, slow, testing the syllables.  The word is demeaning, insulting.  Accurate.  
  
He thinks of the antler as it had spiraled to the depths of the river, stained like a valentine.  The edge jagged, broken from it’s source, then broken again.  Repurposed and sharpened razor thin.  Effective.  
  
Hannibal eyes the ring on his thumb.  Then looks at Will.  Takes in his eyes, the cobalt warm and cold in equal parts, uncertainty stirring their depths.  He untangles his hands from the wool at Will's back, runs his thumbs, simultaneously, over Will’s cheekbones.  
  
“I don’t mind damaged,” he whispers.  
  
“Dam- dami, dammid?”  Will tries the new word, interested by the emphasis.  His own hands come up to rest on Hannibal’s cheeks.  
  
“ _Sugadintas_.  But don’t you mind that one, Will.  There’s no such thing.”  
  
“No dammid?”  
  
“No.  Not for you.  Not ever for you.”  
  
The kitchen door opens.  Hannibal straightens up against the cabinets.  He pulls Will back to his chest, arms interlocking over him, piecing his mask in place.  
  
Gabija steps inside, immediately looking to Hannibal on the floor, eyes soft, like they haven’t been since Hannibal came to, heavily bandaged, on her bed.  
  
Robert follows her in a moment later.  He’s red in the face, jaw muscle hopping at the corner.  His eyes, kept low, flick up briefly.  Hannibal recognizes the sting in the color of the iris. 

Sadness.  
  
Hannibal abruptly wants to scream.  To break every object in the room, the house, to show just how _damaged_ , how effective he is.  Instead he inhales sharp through his nose, releases it.  “I apologize, Gabija. I—“ he looks for an explanation that isn’t the truth, that isn’t _I lost my mind_ , “—overreacted.”  
  
“It’s fine, Hannibal,” she says.  Tears spill over.  She wipes at them quickly, forces a bright smile.  “You’re fine.”  
  
The boy regards her.  “You don’t need to lie to me, Gabija.”  
  
She breaths in sharp, shakes her head.  A gentle sob escapes as she exhales, and she strides from the room.  
  
Hannibal watches her retreat, unable to unfold the tangle in his chest.  His eyes jump to Robert.  Hannibal presses against the cabinets, leveraging himself to a stand.  “I’m sorry, Uncle.”  
  
The man waves a hand, dismissive, uncomfortable.  He bends his elbow to rub at the back of his neck, chin to his chest.  Lifting his head, he opens his mouth.  
  
Hannibal cuts him off.  “But I did mean what I said.”    
  
All of it.  
  
“Yes.  Well.  I wasn’t.  Thinking quite. Subjectively enough,” Robert says.  He lowers his elbow, straightens his jacket with a swift tug.  “The boy.  Will.  If he’s that important to you.  He’ll of course come with us.”  
  
Hannibal breaths out, the ice in his chest fracturing, melting in cold lines.  Will slides from his slackened grip, landing to his feet on the tiles, his arms immediately wrapping around Hannibal’s hips.  
  
“You’ll take us to France,” Hannibal says, slow.  “Both of us?”  
  
“Yes, the both of you.”  
  
“And Will will stay with me.  You won’t send him away.”  
  
“Yes, my boy, that’s the idea,” Robert says.  “You’ll have your 'little brother.'”  
  
“Will isn’t my brother,” Hannibal corrects, automatic, mouth shaping the obvious before he can prevent it.  He knows, deep in his chest, in the color of his ribs, that the distinction is somehow vital.  “He’s my friend.”  
  
“Yes.  I know.  He’ll stay nonetheless.”  Robert looks at Hannibal, some of the impatience back, gentled by caution.  Like he’s talking to a live explosive.  
  
The right corner of Hannibal’s mouth jumps, warmth bubbling sticky from the center of his stomach, coating his throat, his tongue like novocain. “We don’t have any papers,” Hannibal hears himself say, tangling his fingers in Will’s hair.  
  
“I’m aware,” Robert says, low, a wet edge to the words. “We’ll apply some franks to the issue at the embassy.”  
  
The simplicity of it tangles at Hannibal’s veins, his nerves, synapses over-firing.  He nods, free hand pulling at the front of his sweater.  
  
“If that settles matters.  Go get your things.  We’ll try for the 5 o’clock train,” Robert directs, turning for the window again, dismissing him.  
  
Hannibal bends, picking up Will, not taking his eyes from his Uncle.  Will wraps his hands tight in the collar of Hannibal’s sweater, knuckles pressed to the skin of his neck.  
  
The pair is silent up the stairs.  Hannibal wants to say something, wants to soothe Will, but he can’t find the words in any language.  His heart is ticking faster, like it’s suddenly in a hurry to escape his chest, fly from the orphanage ahead of him.  
  
The attic door is open.  Gabija stands inside, hand over her mouth.  She turns her head when she sees them, then looks back to the mattress.  
  
Hannibal presses his cheek against Will’s and waits.  
  
“I thought to,” Gabija starts, hand dropping.  “I thought I’d gather up your things for you, but.  There isn’t much to gather, is there?”  She turns back to look at Hannibal then, smile wide, not fitting right.  Her eyes are still wet.  
  
Hannibal isn’t sure what to say.  Isn’t sure what he wants out of the conversation.  “I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he says, slow, surprised when it tastes honest.  
  
“I know,” she says.  Her mouth twitches, curling up and in before flat-lining.  Her hands twist together, dry skin shifting.  “You’re a good boy, Hannibal.  Promise me you’ll be a good boy?”  
  
He looks at her.  Her apron, dusted with day old flour, matches her hair, more grey now than brown.  Stray strands tendril from her temples, forming gentle lines like the creases around her eyes, framing her mouth.  She looks tired.  Relieved, and somehow crushed, all at once.  
  
The sought promise fits him like an oversized shirt.  But he tries it on, because she trusted him with the boy in his arms. 

“I will," he says, the taste of blood, the sparkle of diamonds and rubies, fat and good on his tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My interpretation of Hannibal is that he feels so intensely, too intensely, but typically in an incredibly uncomplicated, straightforward fashion. I think by the show canon, Will is one of the few things he's ever felt conflicted about, and that's why he botched things so effectively over and over.
> 
> In other news. I was going to cram in a lot more for this chapter so I could do that big skip into Part II but I didn't want to make you all wait another two weeks for an 8 - 10k chapter, so *cries* this is what will have to tide you over!
> 
> Poll for the audience: would you like some chapters of Part II and Part III of this fic to be from WIll's perspective or would you like it to be all Hannibal, all the way? Edit: You guys are cracking me up xD of course we wouldn't get Will's perspective until he's at least 12. This is me planning the road ahead. Have faith that if I employ his perspective it will be done for a purpose!
> 
> Thank you so much for your continued patience and support and fantastic comments and rest assured I will not abandon this fic <3


	11. Lick

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just when you give up hope, blu emerges from the rubble of L.I.F.E., gasping for breath, waving a fistful of crumpled notes, shouting to the sky, "Please, take it! Take it and forgive me!"
> 
> unbeta'd

The glass presses a dull burn into Hannibal’s forehead, window warmed by the sun.  Trees, summer green, blur into afternoon gold, too fast to track.  Hannibal’s hand is damp with sweat, fingers stiff, wrapped around Will’s.  The boy gives a small murmur beside him.  Hannibal keeps his eyes on the window.  
  
He’s afraid to open his mouth.  Afraid to look at anything and see, to break the illusion and wake up on a thin mattress, alone on a cold November morning.  Something ugly is still shattering between his ribs and his lungs, the pieces unfolding slowly, tearing at the scars on his heart.  
  
Two French passports sit heavy in his breast pocket.  One for Hannibal Lecter VIII, and one for Will Graham.  
  
“It’ll make things easier,” Robert had insisted, hushed, voice nearly lost in the crowd at the embassy.  
  
The suggestion was a hook in his sternum, yanking down and out.  “No,” Hannibal replied, too sharp,  “No, it has to be Graham, for now.  Will Graham.”  
  
“Hannibal, let’s be reasonable,” Robert’s voice had been pitched too complex to discern, only swelling Hannibal’s irritation.  
  
“You don’t understand.  It would be your name on his passport.  If it’s Lecter, it has to be my name,” Hannibal said, chest tight, aware even in the moment that logic had fled the conversation, unable to get a hold on it.  Caught instead on the mental image of his mother and father.  
  
Robert bent at the waist, placed his hands on his knees to meet Hannibal’s eyes. “Hannibal, my boy.  We have the same last name,” he said, gentle, the most gentle he’d been yet.  
  
“I know.” He'd swallowed sparks of anger.  “I realize that, Uncle, but please, just Graham.”  
  
Robert straightened up, rubbed a hand over his face.  “Alright.  Alright.  Will Graham it is,” he had breathed, “Graham.  Got the spelling?  No, ma’am, with an ‘h,’ British spelling...”  
  
Hannibal is back on the train in a sideways shift, letting the memory fade like smoke.  He breathes, shaky, nose pressing to the window, smudging the landscape.  Will’s hand squirms in his, for attention rather than release.  
  
Hannibal takes a deep pull of air, trying not to taste dust and stale tea caked into the carpet.  He turns his head to give Will a small smile.  
  
Will returns it, all teeth.  He pulls Do up to his chin, pinning his eyes to Robert, seated on the other side of the compartment.  Will’s happy expression gains a leery edge.  
  
He hasn’t decided on Robert Lecter.  When the man had lifted him onto the train that morning, Will had formed two perfect fists and beaten at Robert’s head in silent, panicked anger.  Robert had turned nearly purple, but tangled his reproach into unformed syllables.  
  
Hours later, a sticky silence still clings to the air.  It's stirred as Robert shifts again, his trousers collecting wrinkles.  He turns a page in his newspaper, flicking the paper erect.  
  
“Where,” Will starts, turning to Hannibal again, “we going, Ni?”  
  
“I told you, Will,” Hannibal says, quiet, eyes on Robert.  He leans towards Will, pulling him closer, then onto his lap.  “We’re going to Paris with Uncle Robert.”  
  
Will hums.  “Pears good?” he asks, voice muffled on the stuffed animal pressed to his mouth.  
  
“Paris,” Hannibal corrects, lowering Do with a hand.  “Yes, Will, Paris is very good.  Uncle Robert is going to look after us,” he says, voice lower yet, whispered into Will’s hair, slowed with reluctance.  
  
Will turns on his lap, eyes narrowed.  “No,” he says, not matching Hannibal’s volume.  “Ni does.”  
  
Pride, honey thick, coats Hannibal’s stomach at the words, quickly soured by old fear.  Hannibal licks his lips, blinks twice.  “Yes,” he says, “But Uncle Robert will help.  So be polite, Will, alright?  No hitting Robert.”  
  
Will gives something between a grunt and a hum, slapping his palm against the window.  
  
“I mean it, Will,” Hannibal lets authority slip into the whisper, tipping Will’s chin up and to the side to find his eyes.  “We don’t hit people who are useful.”  
  
Will pouts.  He releases the expression to quickly rotate his chin away from Hannibal’s finger, biting down on the side of it, tiny teeth applying gentle but firm pressure, laughter muffled against Hannibal’s knuckle.  
  
“No biting him either,” Hannibal chides around a smile, tightening his arms around Will briefly, fondly.  
  
He looks up to find Robert’s eyes on them over the edge of the newspaper.  “Rather physical, isn’t he?” Robert muses, tone of observation lilting the Lithuanian.  
  
Hannibal’s jaw tightens, tongue pressed tight against his front teeth.  “No more than any other small child,” he denies, liking the taste of the lie, hating the necessity.  ”He’s quite gentle,” he continues, and it somehow fits against the lie.  “Will loves animals.”    
  
Robert nods, eyes dropping back to the newspaper.  “Miya keeps a small dog the boy’s bound to like.  And of course, the horses.  He’ll do well,” he says, eyes meeting Hannibal’s briefly.  _"What about you?"_   Robert doesn't ask.  
  
Hannibal's eyes flick back to the window.  He sets his elbow on the edge, propping up his chin on a fist.  He ignores the implied question, allows himself a frown at the thought of horses.  
  
Will’s attention had snapped to Robert.  “Dog?  Where, where’s dog?”  Will asks, urgent.  He shakes Do at the man for good measure.  
  
The train begins to slow as Robert looks up at him, folding the newspaper.  He smiles at Will, the look of a man at last in familiar territory.  “At home.  You’ll get to meet the dog in just a few hours.”  He sets about organizing his briefcase, folding his coat.  
  
“You’ll get to have a dog, Will,” Hannibal murmurs, another piece unmooring, sharp, from the casing around his heart.  
  
“Blood hound!” Will shrieks.  Hannibal stills.  He’d only mentioned a blood hound once.  
  
“What?” Robert asks, bemused.  “No, it’s a, what is it?  Shiba Inu.”  
  
Will turns to look at Hannibal for an explanation, eyes sparkling with the threat of tears.  “What’s...?”  
  
“It’s a type of dog, Will,” Hannibal soothes.  “We’ll have to wait for a blood hound, ok?  For now, you get a Shiba Inu.  They’re very nice,” Hannibal promises, having no idea what the dogs look like, but certain it won’t matter to Will whether they come bald and swaybacked.  
  
“Ok,” Will agrees, face pinking with excitement.  “My dog in Pears?”  
  
“Yes, Will, in Paris.”  
  
“I like Pears,” Will grins, wrapping his arms around Hannibal’s neck, climbing to his knees in Hannibal’s lap.  
  
“If I’d known he’d be so pleased, I’d have mentioned it sooner,” Robert says, putting on his hat, sliding open the compartment door.  “Come along, Hannibal, grab your things.  Your aunt’s likely already on the platform waiting.”  
  
Hannibal obeys, untangling Will from his collar.  He places him on his feet, carefully keeping a hold of his hand, gathering up his backpack and new jacket.    
  
He’d picked the jacket himself.  Dark leather, butter soft, lined with a patterned flannel Will had crooned over.  Hannibal runs a reverent hand over the item before shouldering the backpack and pulling Will after his Uncle.  
  
The hallway of the train is crowded with passengers and bags, voices combining, feet shuffling.  Hannibal grimaces, thinking of the stink of doomed cattle.  He tugs Will closer, tracking his Uncle by his hat, nearly losing him as another compartment slides open.  
  
Will’s excitement flees in the crowd.  Whimpers of displeasure whisper from him, sharpening the spikes of panic in Hannibal’s throat.  Hannibal reaches out, hand hesitating briefly.  He lets it land on the hem of Robert’s coat.  He pinches the cloth between two fingers and thumb, hangs on, doesn’t look up as Robert’s head turns to identify the sudden drag.  
  
The man shakes him off.  Hannibal bites his lip quickly, releases it, swallowing a tangle of self-conscious regret.  The sensation is washed away by cool surprise, Robert taking Hannibal’s hand in his own.    
  
His hand is large, skin dry, gently calloused.  Distantly familiar.  Like an old dream.  
  
Hannibal’s eyes stick to their joined hands.  Something heavy and safe drops into his stomach, another piece unfolding, sharp, painful.  His lip pulls up at the corner, exposing a single canine.  He wants to yank his hand away, to shatter the illusion.  They aren't safe.  It's only an illusion, he reminds himself, spelling the word in great, swelling cursive behind his eyes.  His fingers twitch.  
  
They step into the sun in a chain, size order.  Hannibal moves first to pull Will to his chest, lowering him from the train steps awkwardly, not releasing Robert’s hand.  Afraid he’d want to ask for it back.  
  
They weave through the people, train engines huffing over clouds of voices, shouted greetings.  The crowds thin closer to the station.  Robert pulls Hannibal ahead of him, releasing his hand to steer him by the shoulder instead.  Hannibal’s stomach falls, tongue sticking to his teeth.  
  
They’re angling towards a thin woman, perfectly still, her sharp eyes already on them in the crowd.  She’s in a simple but elegant dress, dark hair tied back low at the neck.  From over the brim of her hat, the tail of a single yellow ribbon waves in the breeze.  Hannibal watches it, fingers squeezing Will’s hand.  
  
He’s steered to a stop a foot from her.  “Miya,” Robert greets, leaning over Hannibal’s head to kiss his wife.  “Hello, my dear.  Were you waiting long? Damn train delayed in Berlin.  I called at the stop but didn't get an answer.”  
  
The ribbon dances, just visible.  
  
Miya waves a hand and doesn’t bother answering her husband.  She bends to a graceful kneel, hands pressed to the backs of her thighs, pressing down the gentle folds of her dress.  She releases the fabric and extends a single hand to Hannibal.  
  
“Lady Murasaki,” she tells him, voice thick in heavily accented French.  “You may call me Miya.”  
  
Hannibal takes her offered hand, shakes it once.  Her skin is as soft as Will’s, less warm, her grip firm where Will’s is sticky.  Hannibal bites down on a sudden outrageous desire to cry.  He pulls his upper lip between his teeth, skin pressed just shy of puncture, and forces himself to look at her face.  “Pleasure to meet you, Lady Murasaki,” he says, refusing to use her given name, unsure why.    
  
It’s not spite, he decides.  Spite is familiar, close to comfortable.  This feeling is making him sick.    
  
“I’m Hannibal Lecter,” he continues.  He pulls Will to him, wraps an arm across the boy’s chest.  “This is Will Graham.  We have passports now, to prove it,” he adds, unnecessary.  
  
Hannibal feels more than hears Will mumble something.  Will tosses his head to the side, chin to his shoulder, pressing back against Hannibal.  “Say hello, Will, please,” Hannibal says.  
  
“‘Lo,” Will says, quiet.  His eyes jump to Lady Murasaki and back to the side.  His free hand comes up to wrap around Hannibal’s sleeve, Do lifted to cover his face.  
  
Lady Murasaki takes them in, eyes Hannibal’s arm around Will, and smiles, somehow as soft as her ribbon, and just as uncomplicated.  “He’s quite beautiful, Hannibal,” she says, genuine.  Her voice holds just enough emotion to make her meaning clear.  “I’m very happy to meet you both.”  
  
Robert clears his throat behind them.  Hannibal wants to do the same.  He swallows instead.  He feels too close, too far away from this woman who smells like his mother, who holds her shadow.  Cousins, he’d been told before, his fingers stained by dyed paper, bright pinks and oranges, so unlike newspaper ink.  Folded into cranes and stars and flowers.  
  
She’s looking at Hannibal again, eyes searching his face, critical.  Not unkind.  He feels pried open, skin transparent.  It makes him twitch.  He blinks quickly, hazel eyes bright, willing his mask to hold.  
  
“Have you had a very hard time?” she asks the quiet between them.  A simple question, tone without inflection.  Nothing to decorate the words, to read, decipher.  
  
Hannibal’s throat clicks, snatching back the intended denial.  “Yes.”  
  
She nods once, and stands.  She takes Hannibal’s free hand and turns towards her husband.  “Shall we head home?”  It’s not a suggestion.  “Jules is waiting with the car.”  
  
Robert says something in response, but Hannibal doesn't hear.  His chest feel tight, his hands too heavy, holding Will’s too hard.  He licks his lips, blinks faster, tries to replace the clumps and flakes falling from his mask.  
  
It isn’t safe, he reminds himself.  Not here, not with them.  Not with anyone but Will.  Even if she smells like vanilla and chamomile, book paper, and silk.  He remembers himself, he remembers, and Hannibal’s breath crackles in his lungs, the mask shocking into place, whole.  
  
He loosens his grip on Will, breathing through his nose, and arranges a neutral smile.  
  
They walk through the station, Robert at the rear, out and to a large black Bentley parked at the curb.  A man in a dark cap leans against the hood.  He straightens at their approach, rushing forward to take Robert’s bag without a word, popping the trunk.    
  
“Thank you, Jules,” Robert says, opening the passenger door, stepping back for his wife.  
  
“I’ll sit in the back with the boys,” Lady Murasaki says.  “You’ve had them to yourself for days.”  At that, she slides into the back seat and across the leather to the far window, dress gliding in gentle folds after her.  
  
Hannibal pauses on the concrete.  He finds Will looking at him, soft fear in his eyes, ready to be reassured.  Hannibal breaks eye contact, searching the sky, skipping over clouds.  He doesn’t find what he’s looking for.  It still feels like every rib is breaking.    
  
It’s a dream.  So good he knows its fake, and it aches like a nightmare.  
  
“ _Mes gerai, mielas_ ,” Hannibal says to Will, trying to smile.  
  
Will knows the delivery feels like a lie.  But he allows himself to be handed into the backseat, watching Hannibal through the open door as Hannibal passes his backpack to Jules the valet.  
  
Hannibal climbs into the car, the door shut behind him by a gloved hand.  Inside it smells like polished leather, faintly sweet, spiced by the velcro sting of upholstery at his feet.  He fastens Will into his seatbelt, eyes low, clicks his own into place.  He glances at Lady Murasaki on the other side of Will, but can’t get above her chin.  
  
The engine growls into life, hum settling into a purr as they pull into traffic.  
  
Hannibal looks forward, eyes on the back of Robert’s head.  Will tugs on his arm, pressing his mouth to Hannibal’s ear.  “Get the dog soon?”  he whispers.  
  
Hannibal coughs out a laugh, smile wobbling into place.  “Yes, Will, very soon,” he says.    
  
Will looks pleased, humming to himself, pressing back into the seat, hands bouncing Do up and down gently in his lap.  He stops after a moment, eyes shifting to Lady Murasaki, sensing her attention on him.  He tilts to the side, leaning closer to Hannibal, pulling Do out of full view.  
  
“Do you like dogs, Will?” Lady Murasaki asks.  She turns the words like they're meant for an adult.  An object of genuine interest.  
  
Will turns his head towards her, eyes narrow.  He puffs out his cheeks, lets out a harsh breath.  “Yeah,” he says, turning away again.  
  
“I have a dog.  Did Robert tell you?”  
  
Hannibal watches Will, curls shifting as he decides whether to talk back.  “Yeah," he says, like it's an insult.  "A shee- shee—“ Will tries, brows low.  
  
“Shiba Inu.  From my country.  Japan,” Lady Murasaki replies.  
  
Hannibal lets his head fall back.  He suddenly feels full, like he's swallowed two years.  He can't look out the window, can't listen.  He wants to wake up, be back where everything is wrong, instead of almost right, the missing pieces too large to not see against Bentleys and silk dresses.  
  
He falls asleep.  
  
***  
  
The crunch of gravel wakes Hannibal with a jerk.  He blinks back moisture, breathing in luxury and shared air, and he’s confused, in Lithuania in two places at once.  He hears Lady Murasaki’s voice, and he’s jarred back to France.  
  
“You're alright, Hannibal?” she asks.  
  
He breathes in, composing himself, pressing his fists to his eyes.  Will bumps his forehead into Hannibal's shoulder.  “Yes, thank you.  Are we there?”  
  
He drops his hands to look at her, finds appraisal back on her face, cracking open his chest, peering at his heart.  “We’ve just turned onto the drive.  I’m meaning to have it paved.”  
  
The statement is too pointed, too perfectly angled, to be anything but the hook on a fishing line.  Hannibal doesn’t reply.  He smiles and turns for the window, finding great rows of cherry trees, oaks set behind them in dense copses, lush with green.  A stable is visible at the end of a narrow drive that splits from the main.  
  
The drive ends in a circle at the front of a brick manor house, large, conservative, and distinctly French.  Hannibal counts the windows.  Twelve on the south side of the house, not including the triangular attic window.  Hannibal’s eyes drop from it, chapped lips sticking as they part to take a breath.  
  
“Welcome home,” Robert announces from the front, breaking from his quiet conversation with Jules.  He turns in his seat quickly, smile visible at profile, unfastening his seatbelt.  He shoulders open his door before Jules can do the same.  Hannibal tracks him rounding the front of the car, opening his wife’s door.  Jules heads straight for the trunk, evidently used to it.  
  
Hannibal doesn’t wait.  He unclips Will and pulls him onto his lap, opening the car door.  They land heavy on the drive, gravel shifting and crunching with unpleasant familiarity.  Will turns quickly for the house, stock still, mouth open.  Do twists in his hands for a moment before Will turns, following the sound of water to find the fountain behind the car.  He runs for it, disappearing behind the Bentley, footsteps audible in the loose stone.  
  
“Will,” Hannibal calls, strangling down the panic, irrational, white hot.  
  
“He’s alright, Hannibal,” Robert replies, sounding tired.  
  
“He doesn’t swim,” Hannibal says, not looking at Robert, heading quickly around the car.  Will is standing on tip-toes at the fountain, hands planted on the stone edge, smiling at the gentle cascade.  Do has slipped partially in, plush leg soaking up water.  
  
Hannibal gathers Will up, ignoring his whine of protest, shifting Will onto a hip to squeeze out Do with one hand. “I want to see, Ni!” he says, patting Hannibal’s face just shy of a slap.  
  
“Later, Will.  We’ll have time,” Hannibal says, mood prickling into a bitter taste.  “Don’t you want to meet the dog first?”  
  
“Yes!” Will howls, thrashing until Hannibal releases him.  He rushes to Lady Murasaki, opening his mouth to ask but withering instead.  He looks down at his feet, taking small steps back towards Hannibal, glancing at her with longing and suspicion.  
  
Lady Murasaki doesn't torture him.  “The dog’s inside,” she says.  “Shall we?”  Robert’s already led the way to the house, shaking his head, Jules close behind.  They reach the oak front door, held open by a maid.  Robert looks back for his wife still at the car, and disappears inside.  
  
Barking starts up in the house and Will’s eyes go wide.  He trips into a run, but freezes after four steps, small hands twitching at his side.  He turns back, slipping in the gravel, and barrels into Hannibal.  He takes Hannibal’s hand and pulls him towards the house.  
  
Hannibal's bitterness salts into nerves.  Arranging his expression into another smile, the result feels unusually mechanical.  Palms sticking with sweat, he sees himself climbing down an attic rooftop and hiding in the crawlspace, and isn’t sure he knows how to be human anymore.  
  
A small tan dog runs out the open front door.  Will instantly laughs, high and light, releasing Hannibal’s hand to meet the animal halfway.  
  
“Careful, Will, please,” Hannibal warns, watching the pair dance around each other, the dog yipping with excitement, Will shrieking in echo.  
  
Lady Murasaki approaches Hannibal’s side.  She looks at him, expression measured, but amusement glitters in her eyes.  “You don’t need to worry about Akira,” she says, a measure of fondness seeping into the words.  No doubt for the dog.  
  
“They bite,” Hannibal observes, eyes sharp on the animal.  It looks clean and soft, but the appeal eludes him.  Neutral smile slipping, he prods it back into order, meeting Lady Murasaki’s gaze.  
  
“He won’t bite,” she says, “Not unless Will does first.”  Ostensibly a joke.  Hannibal compares her expression against his catalogue of mirth.  It fits awkwardly, incomplete, setting off a low alarm in the back of his skull.  
  
He’s trying to twist out a response when Lady Murasaki speaks again.  “We’ve stood outside too long.  Akira, _koko ni kite_ ,” she commands.  The dog obeys instantly, breaking away from Will to his lady’s side.  “Let me show you boys the house.  Robert has abandoned us, it seems.”  
  
The inside is as lavish as the out.  Great paintings decorate the walls, ancient tapestries and intricately patterned curtains hung artfully.  A massive split staircase, converging at the top, dominates the front hall.  The Lecter family crest sits at the center, framed by the stairs, mounted above a set of Japanese ceremonial armor.  Hannibal’s eyes skip from it to the crystal chandelier glittering overhead.  
  
The house doesn't compare to the Lecter castle.  But the open double-doors on the left and right, the full-size windows pouring daylight, make the space feel like a yawning chasm, and Hannibal wants to laugh and throw the nearest piece of art from the stairs.  
  
Beside him, Will is again subdued.  He looks around the entry, eyes jumping in diagonals from the new space to Hannibal to Akira and back.  His hand slips slowly into Hannibal’s again.  
  
Lady Murasaki leads them up the stairs and through the hall, offering occasional comments or explanations, the dog close on her heels.  It skips to Will every few moments, licking his elbow or cheek, drawing what little of Hannibal’s attention he can maintain.  Will’s spirits return with each pass of the flopping tongue.  
  
Hannibal tries to focus on that, to let Will’s delight soothe the sharp twist in his stomach.  He inhales slowly, breathing in old carpet, polished wood, dog hair.  His eyes widen, thoughts skittering, as wet warmth flicks against his knuckles.  Akira grins back at him.  Wiping his hand against his pants, somewhere between pleased and disgusted, he allows Lady Murasaki to usher them through a set of oak doors.    
  
It’s a bedroom.  Decorated in a subtle masculine style, the furniture is simple and elegant, new.  The scent of fresh paint makes it hard to breath, offset by a breeze from the open window.  The back garden is visible below.  Another fountain sits at the center of a ring of vibrant rose bushes.  
  
Hannibal hears Lady Murasaki explain, “this door leads to the room beside this one.”  He looks at her slowly, following her gesture to an internal door on his right, the wood stained dark, flanked by built-in bookshelves, well stocked.  “We thought you like to be near one another.”  
  
“Thank you,” Hannibal says.  He feels like he’s talking underwater.  He approaches the bed, knowing without touching that the navy blue is pure satin.    
  
Will tugs on his sleeve.  “Pretty,” he says, voice serious.  “Can I…?”  
  
“Yes, Will, touch whatever you like,” Hannibal says, giving his hand a squeeze.  “It’s ours.”  Suppressed laughter squeezes his insides painfully.  “Where’s the hay?  It’s dry.  No holes.” he whispers, a winter with Mischa, a winter with Will.  
  
“What’s that, Hannibal?”  Lady Murasaki asks behind him.  
  
“Nothing,” Hannibal says, glancing over his shoulder at her, smile easy.  He places a hand slowly, gently, on the bed.  Soft as water, the fabric ripples at the touch, catching light.  “It’s lovely.  Is it alright if we get settled until dinner?”  He looks back to the window, hearing enough of her expression in the pause that follows. 

“Of course,” she says.  Two words, utterly plain, no inflection.  Like the ocean.  Cool, refreshing.  Unpredictable.  “We'll come get you later.  Go where you like, yes?”  
  
“Thank you, Lady Murasaki,” Hannibal says, eyes on Will’s hands patting satin blue.  
  
He hears the door rotate on its hinges, shifting the air.  Hannibal waits for the click of the closed door.  
  
“I’m very glad you’re both here,” he hears instead, Lady Murasaki's voice quiet, honest.  
  
Hannibal ignores the hot stripes down his cheeks, the salt moisture in lines down his neck, collecting at his collar, and he smiles at the wall.  “I am too, Lady Murasaki,” he says.  
  
It's the truth.  But the last piece sticks in his chest, lodged too deep to fall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the coming chapters, I'll be aiming to build the Will we see so clearly in the last episode of the show. Violent and tempestuous and clever and indecisive and tender and vulnerable. I'm going to try to do it through Hannibal's perspective alone, but we'll see. Hannibal will continue to happen to himself.
> 
> Now that I've fINALLY gotten them to Paris, I'm hoping to be able to move through the next few planned scenes with less transition sections, which should mean faster updates since I have a clear picture on those. ;w; I thought the last chapter was the Part I "closer" but I think this actually might have been it. I'm really making this up as I go, WOO! xD
> 
> Honestly, we all owe this update - that likely would have taken another two weeks - to a tumblr user who sent me a nice message a few days back about this fic. I work a very demanding job, and it was the boost I needed at the right moment. I cannot express enough how much I appreciate the comments you all leave here and send through tumblr reblogs or asks. ;u; You're all so great. Thank you for sticking with this fic!!
> 
> 28 Sept 2016 update: I have not abandoned this fic. Been very tired and very busy and my inspiration has been a little adrift, but I absolutely intend to keep working on this sooner rather than later. Thank you for your patience!


	12. Chill

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the author's aesthetic fascination with windows again rears its head and Hannibal hurts so the author doesn't have to
> 
> warning for brief description of animal butchery!
> 
> unbeta'd and edited while sleep deprived

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise, my lovelies <3 I bet you gave up, didn't you? I don't blame you. I shook off the rust and present you with this paltry offering. I hope you can accept with my apologies for the appalling delay ;u;

The patterned tap of rain against the window is soothing, interrupting the gentle tick and sway of the grandfather clock.  Two lamps set soft, competing shadows through the warm study.  The ends of Hannibal's sweater sleeves, wet where they'd been exposed to the weather outside, cool his wrists, dripping uneven onto the carpet.  
  
His eyes flick to the garden outside.  Will is still playing knee deep in mud, Jules nearby under a black umbrella.  Akira skips to Will with a stick, the pair engaging in a one-sided game of tug.  Beneath the hood of his raincoat, color blotches Will’s cheeks from cold air and delight, his mouth open wide with laughter. 

Hannibal smiles, small, lips closed.  
  
“The boy is very expressive, isn’t he?”  
  
Hannibal’s smile wilts at the question.  He turns his head towards his uncle.  The man is seated behind his great mahogany desk, right hand giving away slight nerves in the way his emerald ring jumps against the armrest of the chair.  The piece gives the impression of a throne, high-backed and intricately carved, maroon velvet visible even above his shoulders.  
  
Hannibal feels a surge of distaste.  Beauty is not inherent in decoration.  Much of its value is merely in distraction.  
  
His uncle looks from him to the grey sky outside, dropping to watch Will splash in the sodden grass.  Robert's expression is too complex for Hannibal to parse. 

The boy coughs softly, polite.  “Will showcases his appreciation for the simple things in life, yes,” Hannibal answers, the subtle barb slipping, unintended, from his lips.  
  
“Indeed.  Remarkable you two get on so well,” Robert says, returning his gaze to Hannibal, smile crooked, familiar but awkward.    
  
Hannibal has no ready answer, doesn't bother to invent one.  In the months since their meeting, Hannibal had determined that Robert Lecter would never be at ease with him.  No neat expression, no correctly timed intonation could overcome the first impression made in Gabija’s kitchen.  An impression reinforced daily by the alien subtleties Hannibal always carries and can't completely shake.  
  
“You had something particular to discuss with me, Uncle?” Hannibal prompts, eager nonetheless to shorten the exchange.  No good could come from prolonged exposure, from giving Robert time to scrutinize, analyze, further doubt.  
  
Robert clears his throat, leans forward slightly to tap the desk gently with three fingers.  He looks to the left, at nothing in particular, then finds Hannibal’s face again.  
  
“I know you two have both been sleeping in your bed,” he says.  He delivers this gently, as though it isn’t an accusation.  It is.  
  
Hannibal says nothing.  He wants to lick the points of his teeth, crack his neck.  Wants to spell the word, 'so?' in poison on the dark mahogany.  
  
The first night in the house, Hannibal, unable to sleep, had heard Will crying quietly next door, alone in his new room, his new bed.  Hannibal had slipped from his room to the next and tiptoed them both back to his bed, that night and every night since, together.  Where they belonged.  
  
“I never-- but then I never--,” Robert continues, haltingly, “I understand, given the situation you were in, what you’re used to.  Sources of comfort and all that.  You’re both young,” he says, decidedly, as if this lends significant clarity.  
  
Hannibal doesn't understand.  He allows his hazel eyes to bore into his uncle, shifting his kindling anger into the outward shape of bored attention.  
  
“I won’t tell you, you know, that—” Robert says, faltering again, as he always does when attempting to be gentle, tactful.  An unpracticed art.  “Merely that, you’re near 12.”  At this, the man’s eyebrows perform a complicated twitch.  “Your tutor tells me you'll be caught up on your studies by next year, at your rate,” Robert pauses with a note of pride, “and headed to boarding school.  The two of you will need to adjust to separation.”  
  
The clock ticks several empty beats in the corner.  It sounds like a mechanical bomb, count descending.  
  
“Boarding school?” Hannibal hears the words leave his mouth, a smoke exhale of incomprehension.  
  
“Yes, boarding school.  As I did, as your father did, as our father did, etc.  You know that.  It was always your father’s intention you attend the family _alma mater_ , was it not?  You’ll attend the academy in England.”  
  
Two weeks before, Jules had shown Hannibal how to gut a deer hunted on the estate.  Sliced stem to sternum, esophagus separated at the jaw, entire organ system lifted from the corpse.  Standing in the study, Hannibal suddenly understands the process as the deer.  
  
“My father is dead,”  Hannibal says, realizes he hasn’t been blinking, starts blinking too rapidly.  
  
Robert recoils just a fraction, the flinch betrayed by the inward pull of a hand, the twitch of his eyes.  “Yes.  But I am not, and it’s my intention as well.  The family tradition goes on!” Robert smiles, the expression looking forced even to Hannibal.  He pauses, adds more quietly, “Got to get your life back on track, my boy.  You can’t nurse your wounds here forever.”  
  
“Yes,” Hannibal says, flat.  He nods once, jaw slack.  “I understand.  Thank you for the notice.”  
  
Gaze going foggy, Hannibal doesn’t blink, desperate to cage and hide his pooling despair.  Tears obscure his focus on Robert’s emerald ring, the green slipping into a horizontal blur.  His lungs feel brittle in the warm air of the study.  “Would you please excuse me?  I planned to— make macarons for Lady Murasaki.”    
  
Robert considers Hannibal, his shuttered expression.  “Go on,” Robert says, gruff.  
  
Hannibal gives an unnecessary nod of respect and retreats with even footsteps.  He doesn’t calculate his path, doesn’t listen or smell, retreating further into his mind with every click of his shoes on the marble tile.  
  
That the universe, that any God, should conspire this new torture is perfect in its stark cruelty.  To have damaged Hannibal enough to make the demand of him impossible, yet not enough to prevent it.  To have Will come with him, only to be forced to abandon him.  To be exposed and uncomfortable in this house, yet feel too safe to be allowed to stay.  
  
“The horses aren’t even so bad,” Hannibal whispers, standing stock still where his feet have taken him, the center of the empty kitchen.  He recalls without reason the animals' short, damp hair, the way its shines in sunlight.  Soft noses and raw, gentle elegance.  Will’s shy admiration as they thunder through the field beyond the house.    
  
Will is right now in the garden with Jules, content, away from Hannibal for the moment.  In a year Hannibal will leave, and Will must become content, away from Hannibal, at every moment.  
  
Hannibal blinks at the kitchen counter before him, finds sugar and eggs and almonds, not remembering pulling them from the pantry.  He reaches for the metal bowl nearby, pulling it towards him, whisk placed inside spinning handle against rim.    
  
Will will always need Hannibal.  Hannibal can feel it in his bones, vibrating in the soup of the marrow.  But the puppet strings tied to Hannibal, strings of tradition, convention, _normalcy_ , will condition Will not to know it.  
  
An ironic smile shatters across Hannibal’s features, shark incisors exposed, feral.  The howl of pain in his chest coils into the shape of a beast.  He places fingers one by one on the edge of the bowl, pads brushing the metal, silent.  
  
Then his grip seizes, clamping down, and the boy turns sharply, hurling the bowl into the wall length cabinets.  The metal clangs like a bong on impact, blunted by the angry crack of wood, whisk flying, whizzing across the floor tiles in a spiral.  
  
Hannibal watches the utensil slide to a halt, the bowl humming on the ground as it spins, spins, stops.  
  
“Do you feel better?” Lady Murasaki asks, accent clipped.  
  
Hannibal’s head jerks up.  He meets her dark eyes across the kitchen.  She stands in the doorway, perfectly straight, comfortable in her perfection.  Her scent carries over the space, mingling with the stewed flavors of the kitchen, smelling like home.  
  
He shakes his head once and breaks eye contact, moving stiffly to retrieve the bowl and whisk from the floor.  Sees the chunk now missing from the cabinet door.  
  
“I did not think so,” she says.  
  
Hannibal returns the items to the counter, feels her approach, keeps his eyes down.  “I apologize.”  
  
“Don’t apologize,” she says beside him, speaking towards the door.  “You are angry.  And you are more valuable than what else I find in this kitchen.”  
  
Hannibal can’t look at her.  Can't tame his twisting anger even under the drenching humiliation of being caught in a tantrum.  Several moments of silence pass between them, softened only by rain against the windows.  The boy is completely silent, competing impulses snarling and biting within him.  
  
“He has told you then?  Boarding school?” Lady Murasaki asks.  
  
“Yes."  The inflection hollow at the start, bitter on the rest.  
  
“I could not prevent this,” she says.  Her tone is even, stripped to the essentials.  Uniquely placating to Hannibal as sympathy has never been.  “He has an image, a picture of you, for the future, he insists to pursue.”  
  
Exhaling, Hannibal shifts to press his palms to the counter.  His dry hands slide slightly against the surface, elbows at an angle, the counter too high for him.  
  
“It is right to be sad, to be angry,” Lady Murasaki continues, “Never fight this impulse, Hannibal.  Your angry is power.  But any power undirected is wasted, yes?”  
  
The boy’s control slips.  He looks at her as he’s wanted to, eyes stinging when he does.  
  
“Throwing this bowl, it is a release, but to what benefit?  A broken cabinet.  A dirty bowl.  No feeling better.  If you cannot think in the moment what to do, you must put the anger away until you can.  Do you understand?”  
  
Hannibal feels the echo of the howl, the claw marks of the beast in his chest.  He swallows, almost chokes to suppress it.  “How can this be contained?”    
  
He doesn’t recognize his voice, knows only the emotion in it as belonging to someone else.    
  
Desperation.  
  
Lady Murasaki nods like it’s the correct question.  “If the anger is hot, I think of cold.  New snow in mountains—”  
  
“No.  Not snow.”  
  
Glancing at him, Lady Murasaki pauses, but merely nods again.  “What you like.  What feels cold.”  
  
“Tiles,” Hannibal says, naming the visual as it appears, still seeing the empty bowl spinning on the floor.  “Marble tiles, cool from the spring breeze of the open window.”  
  
“Good.  The tiles, they do not prevent the fire.  Angry burns still, but it cannot spread.  It sits where you like, awaits command.  Yes?”  
  
“Yes.  I understand, Lady Murasaki,” Hannibal says, the muscles in his arms, his shoulders, gently untangling.  
  
“Build entire house you need to control this,” a single, slender finger taps gently on Hannibal’s head, “and you will control anything and anyone.”  
  
Hannibal nods.  Lady Murasaki puts her hand to his shoulder, squeezing gentle and affectionate, the gesture existing only in a single moment.  Gliding away, she pauses in the door of the kitchen.  
  
“Don’t blame your Uncle please, Hannibal,” she adds.  “He wants good for you.”  
  
“I don't.  I know.” 

God happening to Hannibal has merely occurred through a man once again.  These men don't hold that kind of power.  
  
“One last thing to say and I will leave you.  I understand Will is right now negotiating with Jules, to bring a muddy bouquet of flowers for you into the house.”  
  
A disjointed, happy laugh jumps from Hannibal, real smile flashing quick, the shadow of it remaining as the sound dissipates.  
  
Lady Murasaki turns and walks away into the hall.  “You will not lose him,” she adds from beyond view.  “Now preheat the oven please.”  
  
Smile twitching further to life, Hannibal ignites the oven.  He watches as the coils collect heat, soon glowing ember warm like the latest rage in his heart, banked, contained.  
  
Hannibal stands still, laying tiles to surround his anger.  He builds the walls of an empty room to contain it, closing the door on the image.  
  
Around it he can see the faint outline of a palace, large and grand, full of dungeons and attics and sun-rooms.  With it, he feels what he felt over the crushed skull of Saulius, over the dew blood jewels of the hunter.  
  
Control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even know where to begin. I struggled with this chapter for over a year. I needed to get from where I left last chapter to what I clearly see ahead, and couldn't land on what felt like the organic transition. I had a few items I wanted to hit here but I couldn't decide how to establish them. I hated everything I started and inevitably erased. I became a bit depressed due to work and couldn't hit the tone I aim for with this fic. I let it idle.
> 
> Then I became extremely invested in a romantic relationship. It gave me the energy to start putting real thought back into this chapter and I finally landed on an opening I thought would suffice. Then this last week I discovered my relationship was in fact effectively a lie. I'd been manipulated and misled, and I was, beyond words, crushed.
> 
> I'm ok now because of this fic. Disillusioned, confused, struggling to rationalize my own ideals, I didn't know what to do so I sat down and finally wrote this damn chapter. And like magic, when I stopped, I felt like myself again. Not without bruises, but recovered and whole. I channeled my hurt through Hannibal and we both came out more equipped, in our different ways, for tomorrow.
> 
> I don't want to babble on (nor am I wanting sympathy!), I just wanted to explain that so I can adequately thank you, the people reading this fic, for not letting me forget about it, so it was there when I needed it most. And to remind you that if you're ever feeling lost, lose yourself in art. Create it, consume it, drug youself with it, and you'll come out ok. I'm so grateful that this fic has been something good for a few of you in the past and I hope it can continue to brighten your day as it develops <3
> 
> Thank you for reading. This one's not perfect, but i think you've waited long enough! I'll go back and fix any continuity errors due to my poor memory soon as able.


	13. Rattle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> another train ride, another piece in the puzzle that is our monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise! I'm not dead, and neither is this fic!
> 
> short also unbeta'd as forever

Will had fallen on the new asphalt. He’d pushed quickly to his feet, knees bloodied, chasing the car as it pulled down the drive. Hannibal had watched as Jules caught up, lifting Will to his chest, the boy fighting like a feral cat.

Then the last of the cherry trees had past, and Will went out of sight. Hannibal could still hear him screaming.

Pulling in a rattling breath, Hannibal looks at his hands, palms up, resting loose on his thighs. Thin bands of light, escaped from the gaps in the blinds, bounce over his skin with the sway of the train. The air is warm and faintly stale. Hannibal feels like an empty suit of skin, collapsing.

There’s a click, and the compartment door slides open. A rush of cool flows in, carrying light floral perfume, artificial.

“Oh,” a voice says, smooth, feminine. “Do you mind if I join you?”

Hannibal lifts his head, finds a girl looking back at him, one hand still on the door. Wearing a school uniform, grey, nondescript, she’s still striking. Golden brown hair falls to her shoulders in gentle curls, eyes a clear, pale blue, narrowed slightly in scrutiny.

“No,” Hannibal, says, looking away. His voice is mechanical. “By all means.”

The intrusion grates the thin, ragged parts of Hannibal, but he’s too raw, too tired, to feed the fire. He ignores the girl as she places herself and her suitcase gracefully on the seats opposite Hannibal.

Her eyes find him once she’s settled. The weight of the stare, the impropriety, sets blotchy color to Hannibal’s cheeks. His gaze flicks to hers.

“Yes?” He prompts, squeezing the word with politeness.

“Are you alright?”

It’s somehow like a slap, the question so unexpected, so well placed, that Hannibal just blinks. “I’m fine,” he says, after a pause. He feels like his entrails are being dragged behind the train, reaching back for Paris while his bones are carried to London.

The girl looks at him, quiet for a beat. She adjusts a curl, tucking it closer to her neck. “That’s strange then. It looks like you want to cry.”

Unable to prevent the reflex, Hannibal’s hand reaches for his face. His cheeks aren’t damp. He wipes at his face anyway, sleeves of his new uniform rough against the skin, trying to rub off the sudden damp cling of humiliation.

He hadn’t even noticed, hadn’t known his mask wasn’t on. A snarl curls in his throat, silenced, wounded still by the blood on Will’s knees.

“Don’t worry. It isn’t really that obvious,” the girl says, words expanded by boredom, superiority. “Your first time away from home?”

“No,” Hannibal says. He senses, more than sees, the girl’s surprise at his tone.

Several minutes pass in silence. The dull clack of the train punctuates the quiet, static roar in Hannibal's skull. He works to silence it, to reel in the length of his intestines.

“Why do you want to cry?” The girl asks like she wants to know for no reason other than knowing.

Hannibal looks at her. He considers not answering. Denying it, lying, by default. He looks at her, the shape of her eyes, the tilt of her mouth, and sees no judgment. Only that trait of curiosity, almost as deep as hunger.

“I had to leave my friend behind.” The words are like straw, inadequate. Hannibal can practically taste the mildew on it as he speaks.

“I see.” Her eyes flick narrow, smooth out. “You’ll make new friends at school before long, you know,” she says, delivering this like it’s a trifle.

“Not friends like my Will,” Hannibal says, clipped. “And I’m not good at that sort of thing.”

The girl looks him over, evaluating. “I suppose you are a little strange,” she says, matter-of-fact. “That’s alright though, if you’re good at sports. Are you?”

“I don’t know,” Hannibal answers.

She looks at him again, head tilting now, gaze sharpening. “How don’t you know? You’re a boy, you’ve never played football?”

“I’ve had other priorities,” Hannibal says, caught between insult and the desire to utilize the resource this girl seems to represent.

“Well, you look fit enough. You’ll find out soon enough anyway,” she says. “Just don’t let anyone catch you crying. What’s your name?”

“Hannibal Lecter."  He's torn between the desire to pronounce it like a title or bury it in the dirt with his father.

“An unusual name. I’m Bedelia Du Maurier.”

Neither one dubs the introduction a pleasure, yet the silence in the compartment feels slightly less cold, less stifled. Hannibal sits quietly, trying to recall the rules for football instead of the expression he'd left behind on Will’s face.

Eventually, Bedelia breaks the silence. “You’re not from England.”

“No, Lithuania,” Hannibal says, “Paris now.”

“Oh,” Bedlelia breathes out, smiling, small, for the first time. Hannibal is reminded of a Persian cat. “In that case,” she says, switching to French, “Are your parents forcing you to get a British education for fluency?”

“No,” Hannibal says, “My uncle is concerned only for the family tradition.” He chews out the last words like stone. It occurs to Hannibal that he’s not bothering to school his inflection with this girl, doesn’t feel like it’s necessary.

“How tiresome,” Bedelia says, expression shifting to frown. “I don’t have any patience for it. If all we did was follow tradition, we’d be living in huts with our livestock.”

Lips tugging, Hannibal’s expression loosens slightly. He feels a foreign sense of satisfaction, almost balance, gentle the shuddering crush around his heart.

“Where do you go to school?” Hannibal asks.

“Mother Theresa,” Bedelia says, “It’s the sister school to yours. I recognize your uniform. You’re a first year?”

“I am.”

“I’m a third year. First year is incredibly basic,” Bedelia says, seeming to build presence, “if the classes are anything like ours. You just need to strike fast, make a name for yourself early.”

“I intend to blend in,” Hannibal says. He knows what kind of name he makes for himself. He can hear it poured out in Saulius’s dripping spite, spoken in the kitchen, in the attic, in his heart. Hannibal twists away from the sound, breaking the echo with the rush of his breath, the warm memory of blood.

Bedelia looks absently from the blinds back to him. “No, Hannibal, that won’t do,” she says. “You are never going to blend in.”

Hannibal sets his teeth. He wants to argue, to strike the blunt certainty from her mouth. He’s become so much better, so close, at reflecting what people want to see. Instead he stays still, full and sick with agreement. He feels his innards catch on rail spikes as the train rattles on.

“Don’t look so dramatic,” Bedelia continues, “Who wants to blend in anyway? No, you’ll do much better if you stand out on purpose. If you’re exceptional at something, Hannibal, people don’t notice things like… whether you don’t blink quite often enough. Especially if you smile now and then.”

“Is it that simple?” Hannibal asks, finds himself clinging to her response. Exceptional sounds possible, in a way that _human_ never has.

“Of course it is. There’s always going to be jealousy to contend with, but really, people just want someone to worship, don’t you think?”

***

As the train slows, Bedelia unclips her suitcase, pulling out a notebook and pen. She bends to write in tight, even letters on the corner of a page, neatly ripping the section from the rest and handing the scrap to Hannibal.

“My mail address,” she announces. “In case you want a friend to write to, until Will learns his letters.” She smiles, always subtle, feline, at Hannibal before turning to put away her notebook. “Send me yours straight away, once your dorm is assigned.”

“I will,” Hannibal agrees, folding the scrap, sliding it into the inner breast pocket of his jacket. “Thank you, Bedelia.”

Bedelia nods, standing. She smoothes her skirt, adjusts her soft curls. Sends Hannibal a last sharp look.

“You’re interesting, you know?” There’s a pause, thin as a single breath. “Your stop is next, don't miss it.” She picks up her suitcase, then steps toward the compartment door, smoothly unlatching and drawing it open. Voices from the hall break in, movement and breeze shifting the space.

“Until later, Hannibal.”

She leaves the door open behind her. Hannibal doesn’t bother to close it, doesn’t move other than to shape the word ‘interesting’ with his lips.

Interesting isn’t normal. Isn’t good, or bad, but it demands attention, proclaims value. Interesting is a name Hannibal can own.

Hannibal wraps the word around his frayed insides like decoration. He barely notices when the train pulls back into motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S BEEN A REALLY LONG TIME I am so sorry and Will's not even really in this chapter?? I am the worst, I'm so sorry. It was a rough tail end to 2017 for me but doing much better, though I'm working on an original novel now so :3 yay! but boo slow updates!
> 
> Anyway, Bedelia, Bedelia... I've always seen her as someone with a very healthy appreciation for her own superiority. Similarly, I view her relationship with Hannibal similar to someone who thinks they hold the leash on a wolf.
> 
> I tried to set this up as the first time Hannibal feels a normal, day-to-day variety affection for someone. Such an uncomplicated, pleasant emotion is probably insanely reassuring, and likely why Bedelia (almost) always gets away with so much presumption in canon that Hannibal wouldn't tolerate from most.
> 
> Going forward, expect uneven time-skips and a lot more Will again. We've gotten our boys to Paris, our wolf to school, and I hope now, _now _I can get to the scenes I've had planned for over a year. Thank you for your absurd patience and continued support. ♥ You guys are why I'm determined to see this through.__


End file.
